Eli Beets steered his Capital Race Car to the Crate Late Model win
The Cabin Fever event held Saturday at Boyd’s Speedway featured the Valvoline Iron-Man Late Models Series as its primary division but the Crate Late Model class also took part in the 13th annual version of this race. At the end of the night, it was young Eli Beets who came away from the Ringgold, GA facility with the accolades. The Knoxville driver earned a $1,500 paycheck for his efforts.
Eli Beets led the way in qualifying for the Crate Late Models by posting a lap of 14.554 seconds around the third-mile clay oval to better the times of Cameron Weaver, Cody Haskins, Rusty Ballenger, Ethan Hunter, Ahnna Parkhurst, Jesse Lowe, and Brandon Miller.
Eli Beets earned the pole position for the feature race by winning the first heat ahead of Ethan Hunter, Ty Ellis, and Jason Lively while Cameron Weaver won the second preliminary over Trevor Sise, Ahnna Parkhurst, and Tyler Price.
Jesse Lowe took the victory in the third heat by beating out Cody Haskins, William Blankenship, and Logan Palmer then Rusty Ballenger was victorious in the fourth and final heat over Brandon Miller, Jody Wallace, and Brent Rhodes.
Beets shot to the lead at the drop of the green flag at the start of the feature with Lowe, Weaver, Sise, and Hunter trailing. With the early portion of the race running caution free, Beets and the other leaders found themselves among slower traffic by lap 8. At that time, the top-5 of Beets, Lowe, Sise, Weaver and Hunter ran in tight formation.
A lap 10 caution for a spin at the rear of the field provided a reprieve from the slower machines for the front runners. During that caution period, Weaver pulled off track and retired his top-5 running ride.
On the restart, Sise got by Lowe for second but Beets would pull away from the pack but that was ended two laps later due to a huge crash in mid-pack that involved almost half the field.
When green flag racing resumed, Beets, Sise, Lowe and Hunter broke away from the remaining cars and looked to settle the issue among themselves. Despite another late-race yellow flag and subsequent restart, Beets was able to hold back the competition and drive on to take the checkered flag.
Feature Finish: 1. Eli Beets, 2. Trevor Sise, 3. Jesse Lowe, 4. Ethan Hunter, 5. Rusty Ballenger, 6. Brandon Miller, 7. Ahnna Parkhurst, 8. Hayden Ownbey, 9. William Blankenship, 10. Jason Lively, 11. Jody Wallace, 12. Mike Combs, 13. Rodney Weeks, 14. Brent Rhodes, 15. Logan Palmer, 16. Cody Haskins
