TJ DeCarie has been on quite the run. Since joining AJ Frank’s team in the second half of this year DeCaire has scored multiple top fives and his first CARS Tour win at Hickory in August. The Low Country Motorsports driver was set to ride the high notes in the Music City on Saturday, and came away with win number two, taking the victory in the Pro Late Model 100 lap feature at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, all part of the All American 400 weekend.
DeCarie won the pole and was quickly out front, setting the pace for the majority of the race. His only real moment of worry came by way of a late race restart where he spun his tires, allowing Trey Craig an opportunity at the top spot. DeCaire was able to find his way back around Craig, then set sail to the finish.
“That was probably honestly one of the best cars I’ve ever driven,” said DeCaire. “I felt like I could do no wrong until I did on that next to last restart. It was a little cold on the restart, spun the tires exiting Turn 2.
“It is probably one of the worst aero tracks I’ve been to. I got behind Trey there and I started plowing tight, so I knew I had to, you know, capitalize on that last restart to get a good run at the top. But yeah, I like winning restarts—kind of looking back at recent years, it’s kind of been like this with multiple restarts at the end. It’s really cool. I’m really excited.”
Trey Craig qualified second, but after the invert had to work his way back to the front. Once there, he maintained the second spot throughout the late portion of the race, and had an opportunity to take the lead.
“That first 50 laps I was just kind of biding my time, picking them off whenever I could, and just trying to make our way up to the front,” Craig said after the race. “And then the seas kept parting. They kept either wrecking each other in front of us, getting sent to the tail, and I was like, ‘Well, I’ll take that position for free.’
“Then we finally had a shot at TJ there with 25–35 to go, and got him on a restart. And man, he’s just super fast. It’s just hard to hold on. We’re just a little small team. We do it all out of our own shop. It’s hard to compete with those guys, but it’s awesome to be able to think that we can run with those guys. So it’s a great night for us. We wasn’t in the points battle, and this is actually our second finish of the year out of eight races because of so many motor issues. I’m just glad to get one finished, honestly.”
In third, Gage Gilby had to overcome a tire issue and multiple incidents throughout the race to earn a spot on the podium.
“It was just a chaotic night overall,” he said. When the three wrecked there on the frontstretch (Kasey Kleyn, Vito Cancilla, and Jackson Boone) we went low to avoid and got tagged by somebody. And we lined up, but found out we had a right-rear flat. So came into the pits, and got that changed, but the car never really changed. It was still a rocket ship. I thought we had a second-place car, but for the night we had, for all the events we went through, third’s pretty good.”
Pro Late Models — Race Results:
1. 1 TJ DeCaire
2. 15 Trey Craig
3. 31 Gage Gilby
4. 29 Hunter Wright
5. 48 Turner Brown
6. 14 Corey Deuser
7. 17 Josh Stade
8. 13 Ben Mack
9. 51 Anthony Bello
10. 5 Brett Robinson
11. 87 Chloe Mazzagatti
12. 09 Daniel Bolden
13. 18 Mike Scorzelli
14. 8 Mark Day
15. 116 Zach Johnson
16. 47 Carter Whalen
17. 14C Davey Coble |
18. 11 Cole Williams
19. 44 John Bradley
20. 95 Michael Bolden
21. 25 Rodney Dowless Jr.
22. 3 Kasey Kleyn
23. 27 Vito Cancilla
24. 7 Jackson Boone
25. 8J Jayden Johnson
