It was Brandon Ward emerging victorious over Joey Coulter in the age-old motorsports debate of fresh tires versus clean air, but the end result was a 1-2 finish for New Day Motorsports with Coulter Racing Development in the SMART Modified Tour Warrior 100 on Saturday night at Caraway Speedway.
On the decisive restart with 32 laps to go, Coulter drove away from Riley Neal, both on an older tire and allowing the two team cars to pull away from the rest of the field once Ward settled into second. The race would be decided in lap traffic.
The winning pass was made with eight laps to go, and although the stats will show Ward as the sole winner, both he and Coulter celebrated the achievement together with team owners Kevin Powell and Jeff Day.
“There’s no one I’d rather race here than Joey and our team car,” Ward said in Victory Lane. “He’s a great race car driver and to have our two team cars first and second tonight, I know he wanted to win but we did too, and he won the last time we were here. So, two races in a row (here) that a Coulter Development car goes to victory lane and that’s a big deal.
“With about 20 laps to go, even after we stopped, I could maintain but I couldn’t quite catch him. Even with a better tire, they were really fast. With about 20 to go, after we stopped, I could maintain, but I couldn’t quite catch him. …
“He got loose, and I got into his left rear and I thought he spun, and I wanted to let him gather it up because I really didn’t want it to go down like that. But I knew it was going to come down to track position, whoever was in front of the other could hold the other off and run faster.”
Coulter shared the team camaraderie but really didn’t want to see that level of lapped traffic in front of him.
“Just super pumped up for a great run for Coulter Motorsports,” Coulter said. “We played a little bit of a different strategy to get our track position and I felt really good about it, and I think without lapped traffic we were pretty even, but that’s part of the challenge.
“This is amazing. I’ve been running against Brandon since I was 15 years old. I just told him, back then, I didn’t know what I was doing and couldn’t keep up. So, to be able to race him like this and rub bumpers is awesome.”
The SMART Modified Tour season continues next Saturday night at South Boston Speedway in the Flying VA Classic.
SMART Tour Warrior 100
Caraway Speedway
March 25 2022
- Brandon Ward
- Joey Coulter
- Bobby Measmer
- Tim Brown
- Zach Brewer
- Jonathan Brown
- Burt Myers
- Brian Loftin
- Daniel Yates
- Jonathan Cash
- Bobby Labonte
- Riley Neal
- Jimmy Wallace
- Jason Myers
- Caleb Heady
- Carson Loftin
- Jeremy Gerstner
- Gary Young Jr.
- Dennis Holdren
- Jason Poole
- Jason Tutterow
- Dwight Sauls
- Brian Weber
- Cody Norman
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