For Deac McCaskill, restarts were the key to unlocking his first victory of the season on Saturday night in the Late Model Stock portion of the CARS Tour Mid-Atlantic Classic at the Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, North Carolina.
After leading his first laps of the year two weeks ago at Tri-County, the reigning CARS Tour champion sealed the deal by running no worse than second. He held off a charge from long-time rival Ronald Hill and Josh Berry on a restart with nine laps to go and was able to return home to Victory Lane.
“We just haven’t been ourselves this season,” McCaskill said. “We’ve been getting closer and it’s just a big relief to win here. People don’t remember this but I’ve been racing here for a long time. It’s a huge honor to win here.”
McCaskill chose the high side on the final restart and sailed away without incident. He ultimately won by over a second while Hill and Berry battled for the runner-up position.
“Yeah, restarts were key,” McCaskill said. “It looked like Josh just got free off with cold tires and I was able to get a run on him. With clean air, the car started turning better. I then started mirroring Ronald’s times there and I got a good lead. I couldn’t really pull away from him, but the car really fired off good on that last restart. 100 laps is kind of a short race for us, we’re usually 125, 150.”
McCaskill first took the lead on a Lap 30 restart when he darted under and around pole sitter Josh Berry. From that point on, he never looked back.
The race was not without incidents.
A pile-up on lap 14 involved seven of the 19 cars in the field. By far the scariest wreck of the night came with nine laps to go. Stefan Parsons spun off turn two, leaving Ty Gibbs nowhere to go. Gibbs ramped up Parsons’ left front before landing on his roof. His No. 18g then slid down the length of the backstretch before bursting into flames. Gibbs climbed out of his burning car unharmed, the race immediately red-flagged.
It was hard to say what was more special for McCaskill — winning his first of the season or doing at OCS.
“It’s special,” McCaskill said. “I grew up racing here in ‘95, ’96 with a lot of my heroes. We’ve had four seconds in a row here in the past couple of years. We’ve been so close and to finally get one, man, it’s cool.”
The night was also eventful for CARS Tour Late Model Stock points leader Layne Riggs. He received damage in the lap-14 pile-up, running into the back of one of the cars ahead of him. The damage was not severe enough to end his night, and he went on to finish fifth.
The complete results can be found below.
- Deac McCaskill
- Ronald Hill
- Josh Berry
- Jared Fryar
- Layne Riggs
- Anthony Alfredo
- Ryan Repko
- Brandon Grosso
- Chris Hudspeth
- Myatt Snider
- Stefan Parsons
- Ty Gibbs
- Justin Johnson
- Justin Hicks
- Tommy Lemons
- Craig Moore
- Christopher Denny
- Chris Davis
- Terry Dease
