Chris Madden proved to be too much for the competition to handle on Saturday night.
The Iron Man Classic proved to be appropriately named as Chris Madden of Gray Court, SC ruled the event with an iron hand on Saturday night at the Smoky Mountain Speedway. The driver known as ‘Smokey’ led all the way in the feature to collect the $5010 first prize.
Madden let it be known early on that he would be the man to beat in this Southern Nationals Bonus race when he posted the fastest time in qualifying with a lap of 15.23 seconds around the 4/10 mile clay oval. That lap led both Group A time-trials and overall among the 21 Super Late Models to sign in for competition.
Eric Jacobsen earned an outside front row starting spot by leading Group B qualifying with a time of 15.63 seconds.
There were no heat races as the entire starting lineup was set based on qualifying results.
Madden quickly went to the top of the leaderboard once the green flag waved over the 45-lap feature race. However, he and Jacobsen made slight contact at the exit of turn two on the first lap, which wrinkled Madden’s right rear quarter panel and sent Jacobsen reeling back to the 4th position. East Tennessee racing veterans Stacy Boles and Skip Arp took advantage of Jacobsen’s misfortune and seized the second and third spots respectively.
During a lap 6 caution, Boles suffered misfortune of his own as he pulled off track with smoke coming from under his car. That left Arp, Jacobsen, Randy Weaver and Ray Cook to chase Madden over the next several laps.
Madden was able to break away on the ensuing restart and get out to a relatively comfortable lead as his four closest pursuers waged war for top-5 positions behind him. On lap 18, Weaver was able to get around Jacobsen for 3rd after having applied pressure for a number of laps.
The yellow flag waved for the fourth and final time on lap 26 when Jacobsen’s car came to a stop on the back stretch. On the restart that followed, Weaver began to work on Arp for 2nd. Finally, the No. 116 car made its way around the No. 31 machine on lap 33. However, Madden was too far ahead by that time for Weaver to mount any sort of a challenge.
At the finish, it was Chris Madden winning over Randy Weaver, Skip Arp, Ray Cook, Tony Knowles, Tommy Kerr, Vic Hill, Chad Ogle, Jeff Wolfenbarger and Billy Ogle, Jr.
Madden and crew celebrate in Smoky Mountain’s victory lane.
