Landen Lewis is making a habit of winning the unorthodox ones.
His first victory in the CARS Tour came last summer at Wake County, in a race that nearly resulted in a boycott and saw teams mix and match their tire codes and his second came in a disjointed race that was constantly under threat of rain that never came.
It took just a handful of laps for the driver of the Kevin Harvick Inc. No. 29 to take the lead from Lanie Buice and led the rest of the way to score his first victory of the season and one that establishes the 19-year-old as a Bonafide championship threat.
“The first one will always be the special one for sure,” Lewis said. “Everyone talks week in and week out how competitive this series is. The last two weeks, we’ve been on a rollercoaster for sure. We qualified pretty much dead last and had to run the top every race to make it inside the top 10.”
The win came with legendary Cup Series crew chief Rodney Childers on the wrenches, one week after his split from Spire Motorsports at the highest level, and with some time to do some passion projects.
“We came into [Ace] with a different plan,” Lewis said. “Rodney Childers was here and he got us all together. My whole team has been doing so good at working hard and just showing up to the race track with well-prepared race cars. That’s what it takes to win the championship and we’re going to keep plugging away.”
Lewis becomes a legit championship contender because Connor Hall suffered a second consecutive week of misfortune. This time, the JR Motorsports points leader suffered a cut right from and could only recover to a 11th place finish.
Kade Brown, who entered the weekend nine points behind Hall, was forced to drive through the field to finish sixth to pull practically even with the JR Motorsports contender.
Lewis entered 18 points back and is tentatively four points back with Brown five back.
Of note, Hall caused the first caution and was not penalized for bringing out the caution, a two lap penalty, because series officials say the caution came out before the JR Motorsports 88 stopped on the track.
Race director Danny Willard preemptively made the decision to throw the caution under the conviction that Hall wasn’t going to be able to get to the bottom and slowly pull onto pit road without risking a caution.
He also survive the above incident without further damage.
Mini Tyrrell was an early championship contender but has been involved in crashes in two consecutive weeks and a 17th place result now dropped him from 29 points to 36 points back.
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.
