Crashes, Full Sends, and Heartbreak in the 57th Snowball Derby

The 57th Annual Snowball Derby saw plenty of drama in Sunday’s 300 lap main event. Here’s a quick breakdown of some notable moments from Pensacola, Florida.

The Big One

Just 82 laps into the race, Luke Fenhaus, Jace Hansen, and Jake Garcia were three wide off of turn four. David Gilliland made some contact with Hansen from behind, and the rest was history. While everyone tried to check up, most couldn’t in time, and a multi-car pileup blocked the front straightaway. Over ten cars got damaged, and several had to retire because of it.

“Well they jacked up in front of me, a couple cars got stacked up, I got spun sideways and somebody never hit the brakes,” said John Bolen who had his night end early. “It’s definitely a setback for us. We build all our stuff on our own. We get some help from FURY, but still, even with their help you don’t want to abuse it so you try to keep your stuff in one piece. We work hard to be here, put a lot of effort into this. We had a good car, just a little tight in the first run and that put us behind the eight ball.”

“We were riding around a lap down and we were struggling,” said Cayden Lapcevich, who also had his Derby end early. “We came up off of four, and I started to see them stack, so I lifted out of it, then all of a sudden it was a parking lot. Just a pileup we didn’t miss. Long week, short day. We’ll try again next year.

“I guess they all got jumbled up in front of me,” Connor Jones said, who was already on the backfoot after spinning on the opening lap. “I couldn’t see nothing, and I just got plowed from behind. Chain reaction, racing I guess.”

Just Short for Stephen Nasse

With 21 laps remaining, Stephen Nasse lined up fifth for what would be the final restart. With nine laps left, he got by Ty Majeski for second place, and was over two seconds behind race leader Kaden Honeycutt. However, Nasse would get all the way to Honeycutt’s rear bumper, making a massive send on the last lap in turn three, but just barely couldn’t get there, finishing second place in the Derby after winning the Snowflake 100 the previous night.

“[This] might hurt even more than it getting taken away from me in the tech shed,” said Nasse. “It’s a tough deal. I think I could have gotten to his bumper, but I drove it in so hard, but I knew with how much speed I was carrying he would’ve went right around. I got so much respect for Pat, Jett, Larry Blount and the whole Jett Motorsports team. Even though it hurts, I’m happy for them. I’m hoping good karma will come my way next year.”

Nasse started 30th, barely locking in on speed on Friday nights time trials. After being stuck in traffic almost all day, he was just a little bit short at the end.

“I would have loved to have qualified in the top ten like last year. I think we qualified eighth last year and I was able to be up front all race. I like to put a show on for the fans, so I really don’t mind passing all those cars. I’ve learned enough over the years where I can do it without wearing out my race car. I made a joke to Anthony ‘maybe we do need to qualify a little better,’ and I’ve been the one saying don’t worry about it. There were a lot of things tonight hindering me from getting up there quickly. Once I finally got up there you could tell the 51 was fast.”

Back-to-back Wins Slip Away for Majeski

Ty Majeski had the most dominant car of the day, winning the pole and leading the most laps. On the final restart with 21 laps to go, Kaden Honeycutt put the bumper to Majeski for the lead. Majeski would return the favor, but it wasn’t enough to get back by. With nine laps remaining a hard charging Stephen Nasse would also get by him for the second position. After starting the race as arguably the favorite, the defending Snowball Derby winner had to settle for third.

“We had great long run speed all weekend long,” said Majeski after the race. “We didn’t have a great short run car, but it was enough to stay in the game. This race is unique in the sense that it’s always a long run, long run, long run, long run, and then in the end it’s a 20, 25 lap shootout. You got to have a good enough long run car to keep yourself in the mix, and then have the right adjustments to get it to fire [on the short run]. If I could have fired off similar to the run, I feel like we maybe could’ve won. I really hate blaming tires. My gut says it wasn’t that.”

While Majeski has two Snowball Derby wins, this loss still stings a lot.

“To have as dominate of a car as we did and not win, it’s tough. I feel like we had a couple tenths on the field, and that’s hard to do here. It’s not too often you get race cars with that much gap on the field, and its a bummer not to win with them. It just wasn’t our day.”