BARRE, Vt. — Starting off the 62nd Vermont Milk Bowl weekend in style, Booth Bros./Hood Qualifying Day set the tone for the annual end-of-season extravaganza at Barre’s Thunder Road.
Forty-seven American-Canadian Tour / Maplefields-Irving Late Models took on the highbanks in the once-a-year single car time trials with Kaiden Fisher and Derek Gluchacki taking fast time before technical inspection stripped them of their efforts with tread width deemed too wide by officials.
ACT point leader Gabe Brown and Championship Night winner Darrell Morin inherited the front row prior to the start of the Triple 50s qualifying heat races.
Marcel Gravel, Chris Pelkey and Jimmy Hebert took claim to the three Triple 50 heat race wins, each pocketing a cool $1,000 for their triumphs as part of the special $4,300 purse available to the top-ten finishers in each of the three qualifiers. Among those forced into Sunday’s show-starting Last Chance Race, four-time Milk Bowl champion Nick Sweet, Thunder Road Rookie of the Year Jesse Laquerre, former Flying Tiger champion Joel Hodgdon, former Serie ACT Quebec champion Jonathan Bouvrette and more expected to make one final push to join the Vermont Milk Bowl.
Following group time trials, the Lenny’s Shoe & Apparel Flying Tigers saw an extremely spirited battle between Brandon Gray and Logan Powers, each sporting fan-favorite throwback schemes for their Mini Milk Bowl.
The two swapped the lead over ten times in just the first 21 laps before the first caution flag flew on lap 27 as Mike MacAskill came to a slow-rolling stop on the backstretch. Back under green, Gray had a handful of car while facing off with Brendan Moodie over the final thirteen circuits but ultimately prevailed to the segment one win.
Gray, Moodie, Powers, Shawn Fleury and Jason Pelkey will be among those at the tail of tomorrow’s segment two looking to march to the front and collect the coveted Mini Milk Bowl prize.
The rk Miles Street Stocks also completed their first segment on Booth Bros./Hood Qualifying Day. Following group time trial qualifying, White Mountain Motorsports Park Rookie of the Year Connor Rueda blew the field away to take the pole position at the head of the pack. Rueda kept his No. 17 CDR Concrete Mustang out front with a mirror full of returning hard-charger Kyler Davis and Road Warrior phenom Nate ‘Tater’ Brien breaking ranks and moving up the ladder. Things began to turn ugly on lap 17 with the first caution seeing ‘The Flying Farmer’ Gary Mullen, Justin ‘El Chopo’ Blakely and Travis Gay block turn four with turned-around rigs.
Heartbreak took Rueda out of competition with a torn throttle cable on the restart ahead of a series of restart yellows that thinned-out the middle of the pack. Kyler Davis motored on to take the segment one victory over Derek Farnham and ‘Tater’ Brien with Todd Raymo and White Mountain track champion Patrick Switser rounding out the top five.
Making the haul from across the region, the New England Supermodified Series returned for their second visit of the 2024 season just before wrapping up their championship next weekend at the Sunoco World Series at Thompson Speedway. The lightning-fast feature event saw Rob Summers take his first win of the season for the inaugural division champion with point leader Bobby Timmons and rookie Jim Storace joining the podium.
The PASS Modifieds also joined the show with one of the night’s most spectacular wrecks as fans sat stunned with Zach Bowie climbing the widowmaker frontstretch wall before coming to rest on his roof atop turn one.
After a lengthy clean-up effort, Dan Brown buried his foot in the firewall to take on the highbanks and earn the win on Booth Bros./Hood Qualifying Day followed by Tom Oliver and Ryan Ripley in victory lane.
The Pro All Stars Series (PASS) Super Late Model 150 rounded out the evening’s racing activities on the big track. 2024 King of the Road Kaiden Fisher jumped aboard a PASS Super Late Model for the night and started off with a dominant performance at the front of the pack.
Racing hard with former ACT champion Jimmy Hebert, Fisher really felt the pressure just before the halfway point as DJ Shaw’s machine began to make hay as the two battled side-by-side for the lead. After the lap-97 caution for Pat Corbett’s spin in turn one, the battle resumed in earnest between Fisher and Shaw.
While that battle fizzled out, Jimmy Hebert began the chief adversary to Shaw with Hebert nabbing the lead following the lap 140 caution.
Stalking just inches from his rear bumper, Shaw dove back underneath to lead with five laps remaining as the two got physical. An oil spill on the track saw Johnny Clark, Kasey Beattie and Trevor Sanborn pile into the turn one retaining wall to end their days on a low note with two laps remaining. Jimmy Hebert easily took the green-white-checkers victory, his first PASS Super Late Model victory right here at his hom etrack with Alex Quarterly taking second and Rusty Poland rounding out the top three.