Dennis Erb Jr. held back a fierce challenge for the win
Dennis Erb Jr, appeared to be on cruise control for much of the Castrol FloRacing Night in America feature on Thursday night at Lincoln Speedway on the second night of Illinois SpeedWeek. But in the end, the home state driver would have to fight off a late challenge from Brandon Sheppard to assure the victory,
The Rocket Chassis driver from Carpentersville, Illinois scored $22,022 for his win on the quarter-mile track located in Lincoln, Illinois in a race shown live by FloRacing.com.
A total of 55 cars were signed in for competition.
Qualifying Results:
Group A Results- 1. Garrett Alberson(13.774), 2. Tanner English, 3. Stormy Scott, 4. Josh Putnam, 5. Chris Simpson
Group B Results- 1. Dennis Erb Jr.(13.670), 2. Brandon Sheppard, 3. McKay Wenger, 4. Logan Martin, 5. Ryan Gustin
Heat 1 Results: 1. Garrett Alberson, 2. Tyler Erb, 3. Jeff Herzog
Heat 2 Results: 1. Chris Simpson, 2. Tanner English, 3. Cade Dillard
Heat 3 Results: 1. Stormy Scott, 2. Mike Spatola, 3. Ryan Unzicker
Heat 4 Results: 1. Dennis Erb Jr., 2. Logan Martin, 3. Hudson O’Neal
Heat 5 Results: 1. Brandon Sheppard, 2. Brian Shirley, 3. Kolby Vandenbergh
Heat 6 Results: 1. Billy Moyer Jr., 2. Shannon Babb, 3. MacKay Wenger
B-main 1 Finish: 1. Frank Heckenast Jr., 2. Daniel Hilsabeck
B-main 2 Finish: 1. Devin Moran, 2. Gordy Gundaker
Feature Re-cap: At the start of the 50-lap feature Alberson went to the early lead with Dennis Erb Jr., Simpson, Scott and Sheppard trailing. Erb immediately began applying pressure on Alberson and was able to work his way to the lead by using the top side of the track on lap 4.
A lap 7 caution for an incident involving Marlar and Thornton briefly slowed the action.
Once the racing action resumed, Erb began to slip away from his pursuers as Sheppard looked to move forward by passing Simpson for third. As the green flag laps clicked off, Erb closed in on the tail of the field while Alberson, Sheppard and Simpson engaged in a fierce fight for positions 2-4.
Just as Erb was about to find himself in heavy slower traffic, a caution waved on lap 20 when Dillard spun. Sheppard moved to second on the ensuing restart leaving Alberson, English and Simpson to battle for 3rd-5th.
Erb again pulled away, building a lead of more than three seconds at one point. However, as the finish loomed and slower traffic again coming into play, Sheppard closed right on to the tail of the No. 28 with three circuits to go.
After taking the white flag, Sheppard made a bid on the outside of turns one and two but tagged the wall on the backstretch allowing Erb to drive away and on to the victory.
“I didn’t know who was back there,” Erb said in victory lane of those final laps. “I was just concentrating on hitting my marks. The car was pretty good where we were rolling through there. I was just trying to get through the lapped traffic smoothly. We had a good night tonight and was able to keep this thing up front. I had a real good car and it really didn’t matter. We were just trying to finish it off.”
Feature Results: 1. Dennis Erb Jr., 2. Brandon Sheppard, 3. Garrett Alberson, 4. Chris Simpson, 5. Stormy Scott, 6. Logan Martin, 7. Tanner English, 8. Shannon Babb, 9. Hudson O’Neal, 10. Devin Moran, 11. Mike Marlar, 12. Tyler Erb, 13. Brian Shirley, 14. Billy Moyer Jr., 15. Jeff Herzog, 16. Gordy Gundaker, 17. MacKay Wenger, 18. Ryan Unzicker, 19. Frank Heckenast Jr., 20. Mike Spatola, 21. Daniel Hilsabeck, 22. Kolby Vandenbergh, 23. Cade Dillard, 24. Ricky Thornton Jr.
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