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Three days after suffering the most humbling defeat of his career, Harrison Burton fired back to win the second race of the Super Late Model World Series of Asphalt on Monday night at New Smyrna Speedway.

The second-generation prospect led wire-to-wire from the outside pole and took an early championship lead with five races remaining. He held off defending champion Ty Majeski on a restart with 22 laps to go and pulled away to claim his first victory of Speedweeks and second overall of 2017.

He did so after choosing the outside line.

“It’s tough, and either lane would have been tough,” Burton said. “That’s because we were fighting a tight race car. So I felt like I was more comfortable on the outside because I could pinch him down. And Ty did a really great job of hanging with me even though I got a great jump. We were even for a while.

“It was a lot of fun racing with him but I’m glad we ended up out front.”

For Majeski, a second-place didn’t alleviate his concerns that he’s still off his championship winning pace from a year ago. He’s opened his title defense with a third and second but believes he will need a little more speed to catch Burton the rest of the week.

“We’ve been really dominant over the years here, but this is the worst we’ve been here,” Majeski said. “To come up not too far behind, a tenth off per lap, says a lot about our team and race car. We’ll keep plugging away and we’ll be fine.”

Stephen Nasse also made gains from Friday night, jumping from fifth to third in his second championship race. Friday winner Spencer Davis and Dalton Armstrong completed the top-five.

“We just tried some different rear end packages, shock stuff to get some drive,” Nasse said. “The guys at DLP Motorsports, we’ve worked hard the past few days to get us rolling better. Our short run speed has been lacking lately.  You can tell Burton and Majeski are really good there.

“I think our better shots will be on Wednesday and Saturday in the longer races.”

Ultimately, race No. 2 will be remembered as redemption for Burton after how hard Friday night was to swallow.

“We just kept working on the race car,” Burton said of the three day layoff. “We had the fastest car that night but we still kept working at it. All these guys are working too so we have to keep the pace. We just have to continue getting better.”

The only caution was for Mason Diaz who spun out of Turn 2 on Lap 13. His rear end damage was too much to overcome and finished 20th. The complete results can be viewed below.

  1. Harrison Burton
  2. Ty Majeski
  3. Stephen Nasse
  4. Spencer Davis
  5. Dalton Armstrong
  6. Martin Latulippe
  7. David Rogers
  8. Brandon Watson
  9. Jeff Choquette
  10. Brad May
  11. Daniel Keene, Jr.
  12. Derek Griffith
  13. Cole Anderson
  14. Garrett Hall
  15. Gus Dean
  16. Ryan Moore
  17. Dan Fredrickson
  18. Steve Weaver
  19. Derek Kraus
  20. Mason Diaz

Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.

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