You can change the sanctioning body, tire or even the chassis right now and it doesn’t change the outcome of a big Super Late Model race at Cordele Motor Speedway — Bubba Pollard in Victory Lane.
Pollard needed to make just two passes to win Night One of the Georgia Summer Nationals and he completed both on Michael Atwell and Matthew Craig from the outside. The passes came on Lap 25 and Lap 30 respectively.
He fended off Craig on a halfway break restart on Lap 40 and led the rest of the way.
Pollard has now won all three races in a Super at Cordele this year. He has won four of the last five Speedfests in January. He won the first Super Fest when it was UARA sanctioned and on American Racer tires. Now he wins the second Super Fest, now sanctioned by Southern Super Series, albeit this time in his first start at his home track in the VanDoorn Racing Development chassis.
His previous wins at Cordele recently came in a Senneker.
“We had a really good car,” Pollard said. “I mean, this is the first time we ran this car here and we didn’t really know what it was going to do. So, I needed to get out front early just because not running this car and not being familiar with it. I was kind of guessing tonight, going in blind. But I knew it felt good in practice. It had good long run speed. It turned well. It did everything it was supposed to do all day since we’ve been here.
“We just needed it to last and it did. It was very good at the end and I just love this place.”
All Craig could do was tip his cap to Pollard. He set the fastest time in time trials but started second due to the redraw and just didn’t have the same performance as Pollard.
“It was good a good night,” Craig said. “It’s just we have three or four of these second places this year so it kind of sucks but it’s not bad. We just have to keep working on it. We get one corner of the track working better and that hurts the other areas so one of these nights we’re going to put it all together.”
Jake Garcia finished third but was not as ‘optimistic’ as a podium should indicate.
“I mean, we were okay, not good, not great,” Garcia said. “We were decent. Definitely some things that we need to work on for tomorrow night to be a little better. We’ll try in practice tomorrow.”
Garcia is a full-timer in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and he says it’s just challenging for his team to compete with the full-timers.
“It’s tough not having run them in four or five months,” Garcia said. “Everything changes so fast with the tires and
it’s tough to come, come on these things that not having run them in 4 or 5 months, you know, it’s just everything changes between the tire and everyone’s cars get so much better every few months. It’s like I’ve come back to a whole new sport. It’s a decent night but we come to win and hopefully we can get this car a little bit better.”
To all of their points, this 75-lapper was a prelude to the 125-lap feature on Saturday night. This is race three for both Super Fest and the road to the World Crown 300 next month.
The original World Crown was held up state at the former Georgia International and Gresham Motorsports Park. Despite this being the biggest race in Georgia for Georgia native Pollard, he never won it.
“We never won the World Crown, even though it’s had a different racetrack and didn’t have a great race last year, even though leading up to it we did,” Pollard said. “It’s one of those things where you don’t know until we get there.
“I won’t say we’ve been struggling but we’re trying to build a new program to get better and we need to go racing to do that. That’s why you’ve seen us go to a lot of different places to race because the more data we collect, the more we race, the better we race.
“We’re going to be awesome.”
Of note, Michael Atwell contended for the win early but fell off the pace late with what appeared to be a rear end failure.
Georgia Summer Nationals Night 1/Super Fest 3 Cordele Motor Speedway September 5 2025
1
26p
Bubba Pollard
75
—
2
54
Matthew Craig
75
2.321
3
35
Jake Garcia
75
3.010
4
24b
Gavan Boschele
75
3.781
5
89
Dylan Fetcho
75
5.581
6
51f
Jake Finch
75
6.905
7
17
Hudson Bulger
75
8.716
8
50
Jett Noland
75
9.576
9
67
Colin Allman
75
10.178
10
59
Dustin Dunn
75
11.138
11
33
Daniel Webster
75
11.917
12
5
Johnny Sauter
75
12.205
13
24a
Jade Avedisian
75
14.398
14
10
George Gorham Jr.
75
14.795
15
14
Michael Atwell
63
12 laps
16
51n
Stephen Nasse
57
18 laps
17
16
David Hodges
26
49 laps
Short Track Scene’s Daniel Vining contributed to this report.
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.
