Statements were made up and down the CARS Tour roster on Saturday night.
For Connor Hall, winning the season-opener at New River All American Speedway on Saturday night was an early declaration of the potential season to come.
Bobby McCarty had a chip on his shoulder that finishing second alleviated and Ronnie Bassett Jr. showed a lot of resolve. Ryan Millington had no business being in the top-five while Carson Loftin did practically everything right in his CARS Tour debut as a 16-year-old.
Hall is the presumptive championship favorite until otherwise stated. After years of taking the fight to JR Motorsports with his family car, Chad Bryant Racing and Nelson Motorsports, Hall is now driving it and literally everyone knows the ceiling.
On Saturday, Hall earned the pole but struggled to find the appropriate pace on the new Hoosier F45* tires.
“I came over the radio like 15 times and was like, ‘am I burning these up’ or ‘am I doing what I need to do’ and it’s so hard because every tire you go on, it’s a different (dynamic) and I thought when Bobby and Kade (Brown) got to me with 50 to go, that I was running it wrong. But we let it cool down under that next caution and then we actually picked up some pace as the race went on.”
Hall took the lead from McCarty for the final time with 31 laps to go.
Prior to that, it was a roulette of leaders for the first half of the race. Again, this was the first race on the new Hoosier tires and while everyone praised the repeatability of the tires from the whole weekend, it was still a mystery of how much tire conservation would be necessary.
Hall, McCarty, Kade Brown, Chad McCumbee and Jake Bollman all traded the lead early at various points. The predicted race pace for conservation was into the 17 second bracket but the race was largely run in the 16.5 to 16.8 range, which is why Hall felt like he was abusing his tires early.
“This tire did everything that I expected the old F45 to do but it’s just faster,” Hall said. “Everyone was like, we’re .3 to .4 faster than last year but we’ve been that much faster all weekend. The starting and ending point on the delta was one second from either a 15.5 to 16.5 or a 16.0 to a 17.0, that number is relative.”
But Hall conceded that teams are still learning this tire as they prepared to take it around the region this summer too.
Meanwhile, McCarty was ecstatic as anyone could be after finishing second and leading the most laps but this result came with his own team and his own (used) car purchased during the off-season.
The three-time CARS Tour champion has shaken up his approach this year and to begin that campaign like this, is something he couldn’t ask for more over.
“Like, I never in my mind said we are going to come down here and run great,” McCarty said. “I knew we could but all I told myself was just keep it clean and work on it; make it better So to come out of the gates like this with a brand-new team, and a different race car, so much new stuff, this is like a win to me.”
What did McCarty need to hold off Hall?
“Just some forward drive,” McCarty said. “It was really close man. I only lost a touch of drive and Connor kept it on the gas and with the long straights here, it just worked out for him. We were better through the center and I could roll better than him but I just couldn’t match his line because I didn’t have the rear grip to do it.”
This was a very good night for one of the best to do it over the past decade.
There was also a great deal of carnage in the first half.
First, there was a crash on the fifth lap involving Bassett and Tristan McKee due to a stack-up ahead of them. Then Jake Bollman, running second on the ensuing restart appeared to miss a shift and it practically destroyed the race cars of several would-be contenders like Mini Tyrrell, Jared Fryar and Millington.
Millington thought he was done. He climbed out of his destroyed car and was immediately joined in the repair efforts under a yellow-red by JR Motorsports, who pitched in to get the Saville Millington No. 15 back to drivable shape.
It got driven to a fifth-place finish.
“I hopped back in it and said, ‘well boys, I always have my best nights on nights like this,’ like Wilkesboro two years and maybe this wasn’t our best night but we came back pretty well,” Millington said.
“Aero matters but at the end of the day, we spend all this time working on these cars, destroy the bodies and drive it from 30th to the top-3,” Bassett said. “They told me it was good to go and I believed them.
“And really, it made our plan easier because we just committed to running in the back, save tires, and I said it, that the race just kind of came to us.”
Landen Lewis and Caden Kvapil almost salvaged top-5s after having to start in the back. Lewis saw his Kevin Harvick Inc. team have to swap out everything in the No. 29 except the driver and started at the rear of the field. Kvapil had to replace the carburetor before qualifying and only made the show through a 2024 points provisional.
They came together racing for a top-5 late and Lewis took responsibility for it.
Lastly, while Hall targets a CARS Tour championship run, intending to add that to his two NASCAR Weekly Series National Championships, don’t expect the JR Motorsports No. 88 to have to once again deal with McCarty as it did throughout the Josh Berry era.
McCarty is sticking to his partial season plan even after this great run.
“We’re sticking to our every other weekend deal,” McCarty said. “I don’t want to burn these guys out. I want to make sure that when we do show up, we can perform like this, and between the funding and my guys having full-time jobs, I don’t want to overload them and I want to stay within our means.”
Hall, however, is planning to make the most of this season.
“It could be just a one year deal, right,” he said. “I’m grateful to Dale, LW, Bass Pro, Johnny Morris and Chevrolet but I don’t know what next year could look like so I just want to go out and win as many races as we can and I want to cherish this season and make the most of it.”
Mission accomplished so far.
CARS Tour LMSC National Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram 125 New River All American Speedway March 1 2025
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.
