Connect with us

CARS Late Model Stock Tour

Carson Kvapil claims CARS win at Ace as championship tightens

It’s early but the CARS Tour championship is still the gift that keeps on giving this spring as Carson Kvapil became the first driver to multiple wins this season as pretty much everyone up front has used a mulligan through the first five races.

For example, Connor Hall and Brent Crews entered the race weekend at Ace first and second in the standings but finished 12th and 15th respectively. Kvapil missed a race but made that up with top 5s in all the races he has entered, including the two wins.

Bobby McCarty was the points leader entering Orange County last week, got crashed while racing Connor Zilisch for a podium but recovered to a fourth place on Friday at Ace.

Mini Tyrrell and Treyten Lapcevich continue to be top-10 machines too. All told, this race was just a reminder of how closely contested this championship is going to be. And three years in a row, it continues to run through Kvapil following his victory in the AcceleratedGFX.com 285.

“Honestly, I just felt like we had better speed there at the end,” Kvapil said of a last laps duel with Brenden Queen. “Honestly, at the start of the race, I didn’t think we were all that great. I messed up in qualifying and put us in eighth and I thought we were better than that.

“We dropped the green flag and it didn’t seem to have as much ‘go’ as I thought we were going to have. But as the race played out, we just got better, felt like we had more tire left and could wrap the bottom better.”

To his point, Kvapil picked cars off methodically while Queen and Ryan Millington raced both each other and lapped traffic pretty hard on the longest green flag run of the night from Laps 50 to 95. Queen just didn’t have enough left to hold off Kvapil or get him on the final two restarts.

But still, a runner-up, plus leading a lap is a nice rebound from a season that includes three finishes outside of the top-10 alongside the two podiums.

“It’s been an emotional rollercoaster with this series, this year,” Queen said. “I thought we were a fifth-place car in practice, maybe had a bad set in practice and put older tires on and had speed but kind of went into qualifying blind with the setup because we wasted our practice today changing stuff.

“But we just missed the pole and had a strong top-two race all day long.”

Millington scored the pole and led the most laps but a track bar issue might have been the difference in not being able to hold off Kvapil and Queen.

“As soon as we got down here (on the podium celebration) I told them there’s a problem in the back,” Millington said. “We started shaking the car and found that the left-side track bar came loose and dropped all the way down. That ended up screwing us, because we had a really good piece.

“Lap 70 or 80, man, I was still riding, biding my time. Stuff happens, right? Mistakes are made, you’ve just got to learn from them. That’s all you can do. Solid P3 tonight. Just got to go back to the shop, regroup, try to build off this for Wilkesboro.”

CARS Tour Ace
May 3 2024
Ace Speedway

  1. Carson Kvapil
  2. Brenden Queen
  3. Ryan Millington
  4. Bobby McCarty
  5. Chad McCumbee
  6. Ronnie Bassett, Jr.
  7. Treyten Lapcevich
  8. Isabella Robusto
  9. Mini Tyrrell
  10. Jacob Heafner
  11. Brandon Pierce
  12. Connor Hall
  13. Brandon Jones
  14. Katie Hettinger
  15. Brent Crews
  16. Deac McCaskill
  17. Landon Huffman
  18. Landen Lewis
  19. Andrew Grady
  20. Mason Diaz
  21. Kade Brown
  22. Dylan Ward
  23. Buddy Isles, Jr.
  24. Dillon Harville

 POINTS IN FOCUS

Connor Hall battled back to P12 by the end of the race but given that everything went wrong (in his words) this was not a good night.

Hall was approached for an interview, and said, this is not going to be a positive one.

There were a lot of frustration from starting 15th, receiving damage in a restart stack-up, getting spun by Landon Huffman and then all the beating and banging it took just to charge towards the top-10.

“So, we passed like four cars in the first five laps and had good drive, turned real good,” Hall said. “We sold out on qualifying so we could have a real good race car. I was really excited about our car, maybe had a fourth to fifth place car but once we got damage, I couldn’t even see.”

The spin was fortuitous in a sense because the Nelson Motorsports No. 22 team was able to shove the nose back down and get the car driving better but every pass was just a grind.

Hall, his dad Earle and team owner Barry Nelson were talking about the points before the interview, but that was after he calmed down.

“I was definitely not counting points when I climbed out of the car,” he said with a laugh. “And I thought I was going to get myself worked up in this interview but I’ve kept it together pretty well.”

But he’s right, that its going to be a dogfight of a points battle now.

“But it was always going to be,” he said. “Carson is going to string some of these together and you can’t count out Brenden and Lee and Chad’s guys. I just hated that we gave up so many points here when we had another top-5 car.”

Updated Standings

Connor Hall
Bobby McCarty -14
Carson Kvapil-15
Mini Tyrrell -16
Treyten Lapcevich -16
Brent Crews -18
Brenden Queen -18
Ryan Millington -19
Chad McCumbee -33

In finishing fourth, McCarty gained eight points on Hall but is still lamenting everything that happened at Orange County last month, the only real blemish on a resurgent season from the three-time champion and Coastal Plains winner.

“So, you never root for anyone to have bad nights but we’ve all had one so far,” McCarty said.

Even Crews, who fell to third, not that it changed how McCarty feels about him.

“I’ve been doing this a long time now, and seen a lot of drivers come and go, but Brent is really good so I was surprised to see them have a bad day. … But really, I’m kicking myself tonight because I think I tuned us out of a winning car. I’m really involved with the adjustments and sometimes I try to crew chief too much and adjust too much instead of trusting the car and (Mike) Triplett. I made so mistakes today and learned from them.”

Queen really hopes he’s righted the ship now and he’s not counting himself out either.

“This championship this year is so much tighter than last year because no one can seem to run away with it,” Queen said. “Anytime someone gets a good lead, they have an issue. We’re hanging in there. We were as far back as 30 last year and we closed it down to five (on Kvapil) so anything can happen.”

But until otherwise stated, this championship runs through Kvapil after winning at Ace.

“Missing one race really puts you in a hole because these tour guys are so good,” Kvapil said. “It’s the hardest series going. I’m not worried about it too much. If we can go out there and keep having races like this, it will take care of itself.”

TWEETABLE

https://twitter.com/03Butterbean/status/1786618643125559665

Related Topics

Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Facebook

Archive

Advertisement

More in CARS Late Model Stock Tour