Giovanni Bromante’s night nearly ended in calamity, along with many of the front-runners in the SERF 100 Southern Super Series race at Five Flags Speedway on Friday night.
Instead, he rallied after being involved in a lap 84 melee to win his second career Southern Super Series race in as many starts.
That’s also two-for-two to start his Super Late Model career.
The top four drivers in the race – Casey Roderick, Connor Okrzesik, Bromante and Chris Davidson – were all collected in a multi-car incident with 16 laps remaining in the race, after fluid was laid down on the speedway entering turn one.
Jett Noland was the first to spin, as he was running just ahead of the leaders, and the frontrunners soon piled in.
Roderick and Okrzesik suffered terminal damage to their entries, ending their nights, and Davidson suffered significant rear-end damage. Bromante escaped with a spin and no contact but was forced to restart at the rear of the field as a result of his involvement in the incident.
“There was fluid laid down on the race track,” Roderick, the leader at the time, said after the accident. “I just couldn’t hang on to it. I just went into the corner and the car took off on me. I was trying to catch it sliding. I thought my right-rear was going to catch [Noland], and it did, and it just turned me head-on into the outside wall. Got a destroyed race car now after leading the race.”
From there, the teenager from Long Island raced his way back to the lead, taking the top spot on a restart with 10 laps to go for the victory.
“It just feels great,” Bromante after emerging from his car. “I never thought I would be in victory lane again, two-for-two. These guys have put in a lot of work and they deserve to be in victory lane.”
Bromante started eighth in the race, meaning his late-race
charge was his second trip through the back. Despite that, “Gio” said patience
was the key to surviving on the wild night in Pensacola.
“Just patience,” Bromante stated. “Really got through the pack. Never
thought I’d be back in victory lane, especially after starting in eighth place.
These guys just gave me a great car to be in Victory Lane.”
The 10-to-go restart came from another turn two
incident. Lucas Jones had taken the lead
from Logan Boyett following the Lap 84 incident, but spun his tires on the
final restart to open the door for Bromante.
“Man, it sucked seeing that caution,” Jones said. “It
sucks we couldn’t bring it home. We had a really good car to start the race
off. It went away really quick. I’m glad we could keep the second and go back
to North Carolina.”
Roderick and Okrzesik were in a hard-fought battle for the
top spot before the lap 84 incident, shaping up for a battle for the win
between the defending Blizzard Series champion and this year’s CRA SpeedFest
winner.
“It was going to be a hard-fought win there with Connor
behind me,” Roderick said. “He was coming strong there at the
end. I was getting really free. I don’t really know the outcome of it if we
had stayed green and didn’t have a tore-up race car. It would have been interesting for the fans.”
“It was really shaping up to be a good race,” Okrzesik said. “I think I had a little bit better car. Stuff happens. You can’t control when somebody blows a motor and lays down oil all over the track.”
The complete results can be found below.
- Gio Bromante
- Lucas Jones
- Kyle Plott
- Trey Bayne
- Dennis Prunty
- Jesse Dutilly
- Jeremy Pate
- Logan Boyett
- Anthony Sergi
- Joe Aramendia
- Ryan Herbert
- Chris Davidson
- Kyle Bryant
- Casey Roderick
- Connor Okrzesik
- Steven Davis
- Jett Noland
- Jeff Batten
- Roger Reuse
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