MALTA, N.Y. — Australian expatriate Peter Britten, known to his legion of fans here in the states as “Batman,” has been struggling at the Albany-Saratoga Speedway since his opening night win.
But Friday night he made a long-awaited return to victory after the 35-lap DIRTcar modified feature, besting Scott Huber and last week’s Super DIRTcar Series winner Mike Mahaney.
“If I knew what our problem was, we’d have fixed it sooner,” declared Britten. “We’ve been scratching our heads and finally got the car going again, but I’m not even sure why we were so good tonight. But we had a good starting spot and managed to capitalize on it.”
Good he was, charging from outside the third row to the lead in nine laps. Ryan McCartney had led the early laps off the outside of the front row but disappeared over the banking on lap four, putting polesitter Derek Bornt in command for the restart.
At that point, Britten stood fourth and he jumped to third on the green. He slid past C.B. Morey for second the next time around, then ran even with Bornt for a couple of laps before blowing around him coming to the flagstand to complete lap nine.
A yellow for two cars off the backstretch just before halfway brought the long gone Britten back to the field but he left again when the green returned. The primary beneficiary of the restart was the 11th-starting Mahaney, who was still mired in tenth at that point. Mahaney got a super start and blasted to fifth while Demetrious Drellos moved to second as runner-up Jeremy Pitts went over the turn two banking.
Another yellow on lap 19 saw Huber, up from fifth, shoot down Drellos for second as Mahaney fought to get by Adam Pierson. He finally prevailed, then blew under Drellos for third with three to go.
Matt DeLorenzo rallied for fourth ahead of Drellos, Don Ronca, Pierson, Marc Johnson, Kenny Tremont Jr and Keith Flach.
“Peter was really good tonight,” offered Huber. “My car took a couple of laps to get going and he got away before we could try to work on him. He’s a full-time racer and we race once a week, so this is like a win for us.”
As for Mahaney, he felt that he ran out of time, saying “when you start back there, you have to wait to get the track cleared out. Once you get out of the pack and get to the front, then you can maneuver. The car got better at the end, too, but we needed more laps.”
Luke Horning scored a hard-fought win over Chad Jeseo in the Pro Stock finale with Shane Henderson and Jason Casey trailing.