The case could be made that Ryan Millington was gifted the lead in the closes stages of the CARS Tour Race at Ace 125, but he absolutely earned on a green-white-checkered against Layne Riggs on Saturday night in Alamance County.
The reigning Rodney Cook Classic winner and Ace Speedway track champion defended his home turn but just barely.
The 19-year-old from Statesville, North Carolina crossed the line in a dead heat alongside Riggs for the final two laps with Millington winning by just 0.040 seconds.
It looked like this at the checkered flag.
“I would have been happy with a second-place finish tonight,” Millington said. “We worked so hard this week. I am so thankful for this one. Praise the Lord we won this one. We’ve worked so hard. We’ve had such tough luck in the CARS Tour, and man, this one is just bittersweet.”
It was bittersweet because he was the beneficiary of a trio of incidents with the common denominator of two-time reigning and defending champion Bobby McCarty.
On lap 80, McCarty and Berry made contact in Turn 3, and Berry spun up the race track and into the wall. On lap 93, Corey Heim spun following a lap of racing alongside McCarty, but actually off the nose of the car driven by Riggs. Berry, who had been driving around the track a quarter off the throttle, retaliated on lap 120 and sent McCarty into the inside wall at the entrance of Turn 1
Millington assumed the lead and won the race with the two strongest cars unexpectedly behind the wall.
“It sucks we didn’t get to win it the proper way but I’m glad we won it,” Millington said. “It’s part of racing. Next time, maybe Bobby [McCarty] will slide around a little different so he doesn’t put himself in that situation.”
Following a two year drought in which Riggs showed inconsistent speed and suffered a tremendous amount of bad luck, opening the 2020 season with a fifth and second place result was a positive day for the second generation racer from Bahama, NC.
“That’s what you call short track racing right there,” Riggs said. “Good, hard and clean short track racing. Congrats to him. We drove into that last corner until we both saw Jesus. We came out and both cars are in one piece, we can race next week and you can’t get no better than that.”
What more could Riggs have done?
“I got some taps from behind, they were light, but that wasn’t the best corners for me, and yet it was a close finish anyway,” Riggs said. “Really, I don’t think I could have done more. I wanted to run him clean and hard and that’s what we did.”
The Solid Rock Carriers CARS Tour will return to action on Saturday night for the RaceFace Tel-Med 300 at Hickory Motor Speedway with both the Late Model Stock and Super Late Model divisions racing a 150 lap doubleheader. That event will also air on CARSTour.TV.
- Ryan Millington
- Layne Riggs
- Jared Fryar
- Nolan Pope
- Sammy Smith
- Justin Carroll
- Blake Stallings
- Corey Heim
- Brandon Pierce
- Camden Gullie
- Connor Mosack
- Gage Painter
- Trevor Ward
- Jonathan Shafer
- Matt Cox
- Taylor Gray
- Jessica Cann
- Bobby McCarty
- Adam Lemke
- Tyler Matthews
- Ronald Hill
- Justin Johnson
- Bubba Pollard
- Jonathan Findley
- Chad McCumbee
- Mini Tyrrell
- Deac McCaskill
- Josh Berry
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