Cole Butcher dominates another ASA STARS Race, this time Dominion

As if it weren’t obvious, Cole Butcher and the Wilson Motorsports No. 28 team are the standards in the Super Late Model industry right now and validated it with a second consecutive ASA STARS victory on Saturday at Dominion Speedway.

It wasn’t particularly close either according to those who raced against him.

Jake Garcia, who finished third, said he felt like he was getting ‘toyed with’ when they lined-up side-by-side for the start of the final stage. Derek Thorn, who finished second, had a tire advantage based on when he pit, not that it mattered on the nine-year-old racing surface or on pure pace anyway.

Crew chief Bond Suss delivered an impeccable car, executed their strategy and Butcher made the passes when he needed to on a tricky one-lane track.

“Bond has been doing this for years so if I don’t listen to him, what am I doing,” Butcher said of the strategy with Thorn coming on fresher tires. “He’s my crew chief and these are my guys and I put my life in their hands.”

Thorn didn’t have anything — even having the freshest tires.

“Hats off to Josh Reeves and Wade Lopez, and Highlands Motorsports, because the first two races this season hasn’t been in our favor so we unloaded here with a new car and rallied at the end,” Thorn said. “That’s a testament to them and a mood booster for us moving forward.”

On one hand, Thorn concedes he wasn’t in the same speed bracket as Bucther but their qualifying effort left them scrambling for track position and to make the pit calls that they did.

“Track position would have been helpful,” Thorn said. “In a perfect scenario, we could have divided up our track position and stops different there. So just minimizing mistakes is our strategy right now.

“We have a new car and this is a team that’s new to Super Late racing so it’s a learning curve for us and I feel like we’re learning every time out and not giving up.”

Garcia, again, felt like he was getting ‘toyed with.’

“Our car was pretty good and he could just pull away when he wanted to,” Garcia said. “At will. That was, he was way better than us and way way faster. It is what it is. We qualified 16th so we need to get our car better and that could have made our day a little easier.

“We still got to the lead and felt like our car was pretty good but we still have areas we can improve at too.”

Recognizing that this was always probably a battle for second, Bubba Pollard spent much of the race on the same strategy as Thorn but a dead battery at the start of the final stage trapped him one lap down and he finished 14th.

Driving the same Wilson Motorsports equipment, Gavan Boschele entered the race as the one-point championship leader over Butcher but also had a chance to contend cut short due to a flat right front tire. He finished 15th.

“I must have picked something up there; just bad luck,” Boschele said. “It was our race to win. We were by far the best car on the track. It stinks for us but congratulations to Cole and those guys.”

Boschele now has a handicap to make up on Butcher in the championship battle now, too.

“It’s definitely disappointing because I do feel like we were better tonight,” Boschele said. “But those guys are fast and work just as hard as us. Hopefully we can find some better luck and get to Victory Lane a lot these next couple of weeks.”

Meanwhile, Butcher is now entering this kind of rarified air that only the elite get in this discipline having won ASA STARS races, is the current championship leader and has wins in the Oxford 250, Winchester 400 and Red Bud 400.

He called his place in the sport right now ‘scary.’

“Not scary like ‘woo, we’re scary’ but the pressure is on scary,” Butcher said. “If you don’t perform, you’re not just mad at yourself but everyone else is disappointed in you too. So now you have that expectation that you’re going to win, which has pros and cons.”

The only notable crash involved George Phillips climbing over Kyle Steckly in Turn 4.

ASA STARS Dominion 250
Dominion Speedway
April 6 2025

Cole Butcher
Derek Thorn
Jake Garcia
Carson Brown
Dawson Sutton
Caden Kvapil
Stephen Nasse
Ty Fredrickson
Austin Nason
Matt Craig
Albert Francis
Chase Pinsonneault
Kyle Steckly
Bubba Pollard
Gavan Boschele
Billy VanMeter
Steven Ulman
Derek Kraus
Johnny Sauter
George Phillips