NASCAR Camping World Truck Series regular Timothy Peters likes to spend his off weekends on short tracks in the Carolinas and Virginia. On Saturday night at Orange County Speedway, he made his CARS Tour debut and drove his Late Model Stock right into Victory Lane.
Peters set a new track record in qualifying but quickly surrendered the lead to Southern National winner Deac McCaskill. The former NASCAR Virginia state champion dominated the race while Peters dropped as far as sixth. But shortly after halfway, Peters began climbing up the scoring pylon and was second when the final caution dropped with 37 laps to go.
Peters surged ahead of McCaskill on the ensuing restart and never looked back. Peters had help from his former Red Horse Racing crew chief Marcus Richmond and was proud of the effort of his blue collar team provided him on Saturday.
“It’s really good to come here and win our first,” Peters said. “This orange juice they give us for winning the race tastes amazing, even the pulp and I’m not a pulp guy. This CARS Tour is just a great series. I’ve been watching it on Pay Per View so I know how good these guys are. My buddy
“Marcus helped me out and I just can’t thank my guys enough.”
For much of the race, it felt like either McCaskill or RD Smith would go to Victory Lane as they battled side-by-side for the entire middle stages of the race. There was a 10-lap stage where the two raced side-by-side with only minimal contact.
But Smith lost part of his fender in the battle and McCaskill was unable to chase down Peters after losing the lead on the restart with 37 laps to go. McCaskill wishes he could have caught Peters because the two have raced against each other for over a decade and are good friends.
In fact, McCaskill was the first driver to congratulate Peters in Victory Lane.
“It’s just really cool at our ages to keep racing each other like this,” McCaskill said. “We’ve grown up racing at tracks like this. He’s moved on to bigger and better things with the Truck Series but I think it’s so neat that he comes back here and supports the CARS Tour and Orange County Speedway.
“He was just better there at the end than I was. RD ran me awfully hard for the lead and I don’t know if that was my fault but second isn’t something to be disappointed with especially with a field this good. The track just produces good racing and it was a good night for us.”
Unofficially, McCaskill leaves Orange County with a nine point lead over Josh Berry.
The complete results can be found below.
- Timothy Peters
- Deac McCaskill
- Josh Berry
- Myatt Snider
- Tommy Lemons, Jr.
- RD Smith
- Chase Purdy
- Justin Johnson
- Austin McDaniel
- Craig Stallard
- Justin Crider
- Christian Eckes
- Ryan Wilson
- Chris Hudspeth
- Ronald Hill
- Chris Davis
- Robert Tyler
- Jake Ruggles
- Thomas Beane
- Bruce Anderson
- Bradley McCaskill
- Stefan Parsons
- Christopher Denny
- Tal Davidson
