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NASCAR K&N Pro Series East

Justin Haley Emerges as Championship Contender after GPS Victory

GREENVILLE, S.C. :: It took 20 agonizing starts and defeats but Justin Haley finally captured his first victory in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East on Saturday night, doing so in the Kevin Whitaker 150 at Greenville Pickens Speedway in South Carolina.

Now that he’s collected that first trophy, the 17-year-old believes the pressure is off, allowing him to chase victories in bunches, and perhaps pursue a championship in NASCAR’s top short track development tour.

Haley was the most hard-luck driver in the the division last season, posting 10 top-10s but having many of his best races result in crashes not of his cause. With an off-season crew change and a new crew chief in Shannon Rursh, Haley said he discarded the disappointment of 2015 with the new year.

“I just came into this year with a more positive attitude and so did the team,” Haley said. “We’re playing it a lot safer but a lot smarter. A lot more knowledge behind me. I can’t thank the guys at HScott with Justin Marks enough for giving me a car worthy of winning every week.”

It’s probably entirely too early to start thinking about the championship but with a 14-race schedule, every race is vitally important — not unlike the Chase for the Championship. With his victory, Haley moved to third on the list, four markers behind Spencer Davis and one behind Kyle Benjamin.

If nothing else, Haley is certainly in a better position to control the race to the championship than he was last season when he fell into an early hole and was outside of the top-10 until the closing races of the campaign.

“This helps the confidence a lot,” Haley said about his victory. “We’ve had some big hits in confidence and had good runs that got ended far too early, but this helps and the crew is in real good spirits now. We should be able to keep this going.”

Haley will likely catch another break by the middle of the season when Benjamin leaves the tour to pursue a partial season effort in the ARCA Racing Series — this despite running second in the standings between Davis and himself.

But again, Haley isn’t thinking about that yet, taking the traditional one race at a time approach.

“It was a long time coming but we do want more,” Haley said. “But in order to do that we just need to keep winning races and do what we’ve done so far.”

The complete NASCAR K&N Pro Series East championship standings can be found below.

  1. Spencer Davis Ldr.
  2. Kyle Benjamin -3
  3. Justin Haley -4
  4. Tyler Dippel -5
  5. Ronnie Bassett Jr. -9
  6. Noah Gragson -19
  7. Kaz Grala -21
  8. Harrison Burton -28
  9. Austin Theriault -35
  10. Collin Cabre -37
  11. Dominique Van Wieringen -38
  12. Sarah Cornett-Ching -38
  13. Hunter Baize  -39
  14. John Holleman IV -41
  15. J.A. Junior Avila -42
  16. Ali Kern -43
  17. Trey Hutchens -48
  18. Dillon Bassett -49
  19. Ruben Garcia Jr. -51
  20. Christian Celaya -56

Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.

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