This is the kind of run that Plottboyz Motorsports has been working towards for years.
Kyle Plott captured his third Super Late Model victory on Saturday night, taking top honors in the CARS Tour race at Orange County Speedway.
The win comes just two weeks after the 22-year-old captured his first Southern Super Series victory at Watermelon Capital Speedway on September 1. It is his overall third victory in a Super Late Model. But it didn’t come easy as Plott was forced to deal with a mechanical issue in practice that threatened to send them home before they could even take the green flag.
“We blew a head gasket in practice, and as soon as that happened, I knew we were done,” Plott said. “We don’t have any stuff like that on the trailer, but Robert Long came over to help us, and their shop was only 45 minutes away and my dad hightailed it over there and got it. I thought my day was over, and I came out victorious.”
The entire complexion of the race changed on a restart with 25 laps to go when Raphael Lessard sailed under leader Steven Wallace and washed up the track and into his occasional rival. The incident began when Matthew Craig bounced-off Lessard, sending him into a low corner entry and into Wallace.
CARS Tour race control sent all three drivers to the rear of the field: Craig for bouncing off of Lessard, Lessard for spinning Wallace and Wallace for being spun.
That left Plott to hold off Corey Heim over the final 20 laps.
Heim gave Plott a shove in Turns 1 and 2 on the final lap, but nothing came from the move. Wallace came all the way back from outside of the top-10 during the final run to finish third.
“He’s a good little racecar driver, and he’s going to be real hard to beat here in a couple of years,” Plott said. “He gave me everything he had, and I was giving him just about all I had too. We were struggling those last few laps, and I think the rear end actually went out, but we’ll go to the shop, work on it a little bit and focus on the next one.”
CARS Super Late Model championship leader Jared Fryar finished fourth with Lessard coming back to finish fifth. Lessard faces a nine point deficit in the South Boston championship race in November.
The complete results from Orange County can be found below.
- 4p Kyle Plott
- 78 Corey Heim
- 66w Steve Wallace
- 14 Jared Fryar
- 18 Raphael Lessard
- 17 Mike Speeney
- 00 Anthony Cataldi
- 16 Molly Helmuth
- 2 Darrell Gilchrist
- 2t Gracie Trotter
- 8 Tate Fogleman
- 49 Jeff Batten
- 54 Matt Craig
- 37 Dan Speeney -1
- 12 Dean Ward OUT
- 32 Harold Crooms OUT
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