Chad McCumbee covered the field at Dillon Motor Speedway in the track’s Late Model Stock season opener, leading all 60 laps of the feature accompanying the PASS South Super Late Model Tour’s South Carolina Clash.
“It wasn’t as easy as it looked,” McCumbee confessed in victory lane. “I knew we had a good long run car. I missed the travels a little bit, and we were on the race track pretty hard for a few laps until the air came up.”
That proved problematic as the race neared its final quarter. The first caution came on lap 47, as Randy Benson crashed into the turn one wall. A string of cautions followed, culminating in a massive accident in the frontstretch that retired five cars from the race.
“I hated seeing all those [restarts] come,” McCumbee continued. “The car wasn’t really, really good. We threw this deal together last-minute when my driver, Sam Yarbrough, couldn’t come. We threw another car’s springs at it and went to the racetrack. Hopefully this gets our year going the right way.”
McCumbee’s strongest competition throughout the race came from an unlikely source. Jeff Melton, known mostly in the region as a successful Street Stock racer, pulled out his rarely-used Late Model and ran second for most of the race before succumbing to Bobby Gower five laps shy of the finish.
“The longer we ran, we could get a little distance on the guy behind me,” Melton said after his podium finish. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to beat Chad, but I wanted to try to finish second. The restarts kept giving them a chance to get me, and finally I got passed. It was a good time, I had a blast.”
While Gower was able to secure the runner-up finish, he was clearly feeling the effects of a long, grueling day at the race track under the weather after the race.
“Today’s been a long day, that’s for sure,” Gower said. “It hit me this morning, about 8:30, nine o’clock. Been running a fever all day. Getting in one of these cars is kind of tough when you ain’t got nothing on your stomach.”
“We had a good run,” Gower added. “My crew did a good job, had a good car. It made my job a little bit easier, that’s for sure.”
McCumbee’s victory will also carry sentimental meaning for the McCumbee-Elliott Racing team. Teammate Sam Yarbrough had originally intended on participating in this event, but did not make the trip following the passing of his grandmother-in-law.
“Last thing [Yarbrough] texted me was ‘You better come back with a pole and a win.’ We were able to do it,” said McCumbee in victory lane. “We had a really good test here with Sam a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t drive, we just ran his car. We felt like we were really hitting on some things and tried to apply what we could in ten minutes before loading this one up.”
The unofficial results of the 60-lap race can be viewed below:
1. Chad McCumbee
2. Bobby Gower
3. Jeff Melton
4. Justin Hicks
5. Averitt Lucas
6. Archie Adams, Jr.
7. Lance West
8. A.J. Walsh
9. Marty Griggs
10. Josh Yeoman
11. Paul Wark
12. Kevin Parsons
13. Wes Burton
14. Tim Allensworth
15. Quinn Fowler
16. Archie Adams, Sr.
17. Jordan Smith
18. Randy Benson
19. Gregg Peterson
