Brenden Queen wasn’t going to just roll over on Carson Kvapil but instead opened the door for Bobby McCarty to roll over both of them on Saturday night at Dominion Raceway.
Kvapil, the defending champion and series points leader had just taken the lead on the previous restart but had pushed loose throughout the second half of the race. As a result, the JR Motorsports No. 8 was unable to drive away from a race dominant Queen in the Lee Pulliam Performance No. 03.
He got to the inside of Kvapil, they traded paint … a lot of it … and opened the door for McCarty to take them three-wide on the way to breaking a winless streak dating back to November 2021 at South Boston Speedway.
https://www.twitter.com/FloRacing/status/1670239899990245376
But really, this win was special for a lot of reasons because it was the first for McCarty since moving to R&S Race Cars during the off-season, following a five-year stint at Nelson Motorsports that produced all three of his championships.
The victory also produced validation over a disqualification at Dominion literally seven days prior from what appeared to be a victory in the NASCAR sanctioned Late Model Stock Big One over drive plates that were legal in CARS Tour competition.
Lastly, the win proved to McCarty that he could still get the job done even as the competition level continues to rise from where it was during his dominant stretch over the past half-decade or so.
“It means a lot,” McCarty said. “It’s just crazy man because this series has gotten so much harder. I was talking to (veteran short tracker) Brian Pembelton and (his son, Martinsville 300 winner) Landon started running CARS Tour this year and said ‘all this series is good for is to make you question how good you really are.
“It’s got me scratching my head the past two years. To pull it off the way we did, I’m so proud of everyone and for their belief in me.”
And again, there was the disqualification last weekend in the Big One, something McCarty is adamant was not a competitive advantage. And genuinely, it’s just a small technical distinction between the NASCAR and CARS Tour rule books.
“Anyone that knows anything about race cars knows that ain’t got nothing to do with it,” McCarty said. “The axles were legal. In all reality, we had more rotating weight on the back of the car. That’s all that really was.
“I ain’t complaining. It’s a black and white rule but we overlooked it. So, to come back here a week later and do this, it’s an in your face deal.
“In. Your. Face.”
But again, this was only able to happen because Queen and Kvapil opened the door for it, and it was just a matter of whether or not McCarty was going to take them three-wide.
“I knew I was going to do it before I got there,” McCarty said after deducing he could make the car stick on the bottom. “I wanted to do it the right way. I didn’t want to wreck anybody. I just wanted to win the race.
“I was just talking to Brenden and we’ve raced a long time. I got to his bumper in lapped traffic and I let him go. But when I decided to take them three-wide, I knew it had to be the right way, not ruin no one’s night.”
At least in real time, Kvapil didn’t think Queen raced him the right way — making the argument that they have raced clean all year to this point. To his point, they have run inside the top-three together all season and this was the first real point of contact.
Queen says he wasn’t going to wreck him.
Kvapil says Queen wasn’t even trying to race at the end.
“He didn’t even try to race me,” Kvapil said. “Basically just tried to move me up to the third lane every single corner. I didn’t appreciate that, and I went to tell him I didn’t appreciate that. I had a lot of respect for him, racing with him in the past, and feel like a lot of that was lost tonight.”
Kvapil said Queen ‘drove over his head’ and gave McCarty the chance to beat both of them. Those were the points he illustrated during a brief conversation in technical inspection afterwards.
Queen, for his part, says it was short track racing personified.
“He cleared me, I got back to him, and I was definitely going to run him up because my guys work hard for me to give it all I got,” Queen said. “I was going to wreck myself before I wrecked him. I was loose because he was pinching me and I couldn’t stay off his door. I kept hitting his door because of that, as well as that was my chance to win, but I wasn’t going to wreck him.
“Racing hard, McCarty was there, and I got the short end of it in the middle, because if I turn left I right rear Bobby and we’re all in the wreck.”
As a result, he doored Kvapil again, making that seem worse than it probably was intended because he couldn’t turn left into McCarty.
What was the conversation like?
“He was just mad,” Queen said. “He said I hit him more than once. He said ‘I wouldn’t do that to you’ and I told him it was a byproduct of racing at Dominion. He can say he wouldn’t but this track produces that kind of racing for the lead.
“I don’t think he would have just let me have it. Again, if I wanted to ship him, I could have just drove into the back of him and cleaned him out. That’s the last thing I wanted too. Even when we were three-wide, my priority was just making sure I didn’t run him into the fence and that we all made it out of the corner.”
Kvapil said he wasn’t as mad as he was before he got to him in tech.
“I was pretty hot,” Kvapil said. “I don’t race people that way. I try not to race people that way. To get raced that way and have our car pretty torn up, neither of us won the race, but I guess that’s what you get in local racing.”
The highs and lows are also what you get in local racing and no one knows better, ultimately, than McCarty.
“I don’t even know what to say at this point,” McCarty said. “Just want to thank everyone who makes this happen.”
He literally thanked everyone.
“I don’t know. We had a third-place car. I tried to run their pace earlier and we really had a third-place car but they got to racing and gave us one.”
- Bobby McCarty
- Brenden Queen
- Mini Tyrell
- Carson Kvapil
- Connor Hall
- Landon Pembleton
- Mason Diaz
- Chad McCumbee
- Connor Zilisch
- Conner Jones
- Brandon Pierce
- Jacob Heafner
- Landon Huffman
- Ryan Millington
- Logan Clark
- Carson Brown
- Cameron Bolin
- Andrew Grady
- Bryant Barnhill
- Chase Burrow
- Dylon Wilson
- Jonathan Findley
- Mike Looney
- Tate Fogleman
- Ronnie Bassett Jr
- Kaden Honeycutt
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