SOPHIA, NC — Tommy Lemons, Jr. used his experience and survived a late race battle with Myatt Snider to pocket $5,000 and the win at Caraway Speedway’s 51st season opener Sunday afternoon. For the Troy, North Carolina native, the race on Sunday was a home game and Lemons had a full audience in the house to watch him score his second big win in two weeks to begin 2016.
17 NASCAR Late Model Stock Cars took the green flag to begin the 2016 season at Caraway Speedway in the first of six long distance races this season at the track. For the first time in a LMSC race at Caraway Speedway, live pit stops were on the card as the teams could change 2 tires at any point during the race. This was such a big deal, that several teams brought in some hired guns to pit their cars.
The green flag flew with former track champion Travis Swaim and Myrtle Beach 400 winner Myatt Snider on the front row. Swaim would get out to an early race lead as the field settled in for a long green run.
On lap 65, the caution flag waved to set up the show everyone had waited for since the pit stop scenario was announced.
The entire field came down and took their 2 tires, except Patrick Coleman who just made an adjustment. Off pit road, Swaim held the lead followed by Coleman, Matt Bowling, Snider and defending NASCAR Whelen All American Champion Lee Pulliam who was up to fifth after a poor effort in qualifying.
“We came in second and went out seventh so we lost 5 positons,” said Lemons about his pit stop. “We done it all in house and just felt like the better cars would come back to the front.”
As the race approached the 100 lap mark, both Pulliam and Lemons began their march up through the field. Just about ten laps after Pulliam took away third from Bowling, the engine suffered a huge miss off turn 4 and on lap 102 his day was over.
The restart saw the intensity pick up on the track as Lemons made the move around race dominator Swaim for the first lead change of the event. Snider also was in this battle and was able to clear Swaim for second.
Swaim was able to retake second from Snider a few laps later and had run down leader Lemons. However, his race came to an end as the engine shut off as he exited turn four on lap 132.
“The motor just locked up with no warning,” said Swaim after he pulled off the track.
The race came down to Lemons and Snider as they would exchange the lead a couple of times in the middle of several restarts. At one point Snider made the pass, but a crash just behind them negated that move and put Lemons back in the lead.
One lap after the restart at lap 139 Snider was on the outside of Lemons as they entered turn one and contact between the two sent Snider around from the lead and brought the caution out. The Snider crew was far from happy as Lemons would inherit the lead.
“I’ll take the blame, you can rest it on my shoulders,” said Lemons on the contact with Snider. “I didn’t mean to spin him, just meant to move up the race track a little bit and get back under him. My car didn’t want to take off their on those couple restarts and you know it is just part of racing. I hate it for his guys.”
Lemons would then check out on the final restart and come home with the win and the $5,000 paycheck that went with it. Bradley McCaskill had a quiet day and ended up a solid second with Ryan Wilson in third at the checkers.
“We normally don’t start racing for a couple weeks, but everybody wanted to start a little bit earlier this year and it is awesome to start the year with two big victories,” said Lemons after the race win.
Lemons is now hoping to carry the momentum of his early season success into the CARS Tour when the season starts on April 2nd at Southern National Motorsports Park.
“We are probably going to concentrate on the CARS deal,” Lemons said of his season plans. “The NASCAR deal is so hard to put together 22 or 24 wins a year. Lee has been pretty good at doing that the past few years. It is a pretty hard feat to start out the year going for it. You just have to accumulate some wins and later in the season if you are in position you might go attack a little bit harder. Right now we are just racing race per race.”
Bradley McCaskill had a solid runner-up finish in a crate engine car.
“We got an awesome power plant under the hood,” McCaskill remarked. “The only problem is this is a crate motor and we get a weight break. That’s where we kind of shined towards the end of the race. Tommy had an amazing car all weekend and just to be able to hang with him is pretty great.”
