Tyler Erb scored his second SpeedWeeks win on Monday at East Bay
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series left Golden Isles Speedway in Waynesville, GA after a weekend of competition there and headed south for its second phase of Georgia-Florida SpeedWeeks at the East Bay Raceway Park in the Tampa area. More than 50 cars entered the Monday night event that would ultimately pay the winner’s purse of $5,000 to Tyler Erb after he captured the checkered flag on the first night of the Wrisco Winternationals. The driver of the Best Performance Motorsports car had already won the LOLMDS season opener on Saturday at GIS.
Local driver Kyle Bronson set the fast time in Group A qualifying with a lap of 15.036 seconds to beat out Hudson O’Neal, Billy Moyer Sr., Tyler Erb, and Tanner English.
After suffering a horrifying roll over crash on Saturday at Golden Isles, Brian Shirley led the way in Group B qualifying and overall with a time of 14.996 seconds to better the efforts of Brandon Sheppard, Chase Junghans, Jonathan Davenport, and Gregg Satterlee.
Tyler Erb earned the pole for the feature when he captured the first heat race of the night with Austin Hubbard and Kyle Bronson also moving on to the feature from that event while Hudson O’Neal took the second preliminary ahead of his dad Don O’Neal and Jason Jameson.
Josh Richards earned the win in the third heat by beating out Billy Moyer, Sr. and Joey Moriarty.
Jonathan Davenport would start the feature from the outside of the front row by virtue of his win in the fourth heat race ahead of Devin Moran and Scott Bloomquist with Brandon Sheppard winning the fifth heat by outrunning Gregg Satterlee and Freddie Carpenter.
Chase Junghans took the sixth and final heat over Jimmy Owens and Dennis Erb, Jr.
Tim McCreadie and Brandon Overton were the B-main winners for the night. Billy Moyer, Jr. took the final transfer position for the feature by winning the Strawberry Dash.
At the start of the 30-lap feature it was Davenport who went to the early lead ahead of Hudson O’Neal, Richards and Tyler Erb. Hubbard began moving forward when he went by Erb for fourth on the third circuit and then went to third by sweeping around Richards. But that move would be short-lived as Richards regained the position one lap later.
Richards then went by O’Neal to take the runner-up spot on lap 7. But with the action moving at a fast and furious pace in a race that would ultimately run caution-free, Richards and Sheppard took Davenport three-wide as both moved by the defending champion to take first and second on lap 9. Then Sheppard went to the lead one lap later.
Erb began to rumble on the outside just before the halfway point. He moved to second on lap 12 and then to the top spot while battling slower traffic on lap 13.
Throughout the second half it would be Erb maintaining a relatively comfortable lead with Richards and Sheppard involved in an intense battle for second. But in the end, Erb sailed under the checkered flag to score his second win of the season after taking season opener at Golden Isles.
Feature Finish: 1. Tyler Erb, 2. Josh Richards, 3. Brandon Sheppard, 4. Austin Hubbard, 5. Don O’Neal, 6. Billy Moyer, Sr., 7. Chase Junghans, 8. Jonathan Davenport, 9. Kyle Bronson, 10. Hudson O’Neal, 11. Earl Pearson, Jr., 12. Devin Moran, 13. Tim McCreadie, 14. Gregg Saterlee, 15. Dennis Erb, Jr., 16. Tanner English, 17. Tyler Carpenter, 18. Joey Moriarty, 19. Stormy Scott, 20. Jason Jameson, 21. Freddie Carpenter, 22. Billy Moyer, Jr., 23. Brandon Overton, 24. Jimmy Owens, 25. Brian Shirley, 26. Scott Bloomquist
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