A spectacular summer for Ryan Preece continued Saturday night at Oswego Speedway in the Toyota Mod Classic 150 presented by McDonald’s.
The Berlin, Connecticut, native took his fifth checkered flag of the season. Preece took the lead from Matt Hirschman on Lap 114 and never looked back.
“We came in and made a little bit of an adjustment because I felt he [Hirschman] was better in the first half,” said Preece of the halftime stop. “We were good. Just kind of tried to make him go hard the whole time.”
The victory was the 20th of Preece’s Whelen Modified Tour career and the first at Oswego. Preece ran up front all race long. After qualifying fourth, Preece quickly made his way up to second. On Lap 114, Preece dove underneath Hirschman in turn three. After taking the lead, Preece pulled away, with no one able to challenge the 25-year-old.
Preece took the checkers 2.849 seconds ahead of Hirschman. Earlier in the day, Hirschman won his second straight Coors Light Pole Award and went to lead a race-high 117 laps.
Preece also extended his point lead to nine over Doug Coby. Rowan Pennink is third, 16 points behind Preece and one ahead of Timmy Solomito.
Justin Bonsignore was sixth at Oswego and is six points behind Solomito. Craig Lutz, Max Zachem, Dave Sapienza and Pennink rounded out the top 10 at Oswego.
Four championship events remain before the season-ending Sunoco World Series 150 at Thompson Speedway on Oct. 15.
The Toyota Mod Classic 150 results can be found below.
- Ryan Preece
- Matt Hirschman
- Timmy Solomito
- Doug Coby
- Eric Goodale
- Justin Bonsignore
- Craig Lutz
- Max Zachem
- Dave Sapienza
- Rowan Pennink
- Rob Summers
- Matt Swanson
- Ronnie Williams
- Gary Putnam
- Calvin Carroll
- Wade Cole
- Ted Christopher
- Patrick Emerling
- Walter Sutcliffe Jr.
- Kyle Ebersole
- Melissa Fifield
Ordinarily, when Philip Morris and Lee Pulliam show up to a short track, they are the undisputed favorites to win on any given Saturday night.
Ordinarily.
But both showed up to Hickory Motor Speedway for the Bobby Isaac Memorial 150 with a combined zero Late Model Stock starts at the Birthplace of the NASCAR Stars.
Pulliam arrived because his 2017 home track (Myrtle Beach Speedway) has the weekend off and Morris is making his Hickory debut because Motor Mile Speedway was rained out due to the remnants of Hurricane Harvey.
“This is my first time here period,” Morris said. “In fact, my guys pulled up some Youtube videos to give me idea of where the line was and let me tell you, it’s nothing like the video. This place is bumpy. It has character.”
Unlike, Morris, Pulliam does have some experience at Hickory, having made a start there back in 2013 in the old X1R Pro Cup Series. He started second and finished fifth.
He made the trip because he has a narrow one point lead over Trevor Huddleston in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series championship standings. The 20-car field is enough to give him full field points should he win.
“We’re points racing,” Pulliam said. “We had hoped to be able to test before the race but we showed up with no practice. We got some practice and feel okay about it. We’ve worked hard today. Our car isn’t quite where it needs to be but we’ll figure it out.”
Morris faced some degree of adversity getting to Hickory however, as he was involved in an incident on the way to North Carolina.
“Well, we didn’t find out until a few hours ago that our race at Motor Mile was canceled and then we thrashed to get here,” Morris said. “We had a four-wide on a three-lane road and we just didn’t fit. It was too big of a tug and caught the rear end of the truck and that put us behind so missed practice.
“I handicapped us a bit in qualifying but our guys have an idea so we should be better.”
Ty Gibbs, son of NASCAR team owner Joe Gibbs qualified on the pole. The starting lineup for the Bobby Isaac Memorial 150 can be found below.
- Ty Gibbs 15.074
- Justin Carroll 15.136
- Josh Berry 15.150
- Ryan Millington 15.170
- Anthony Alfredo 15.179
- Will Burns 15.185
- Lee Pulliam 15.185
- Cole Glasson 15.198
- Thomas Beane 15.207
- Annabeth Barnes-Crum 15.295
- Landon Huffman 15.303
- Matt Leicht 15.332
- Sam Mayer 15.333
- Charlie Watson 15.341
- Philip Morris 15.342
- Kevin Leicht 15.343
- Thomas Scott 15.479
- Juan Gonzalez 15.531
- Tomas Gasperak 15.757
- William Lester 16.687
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Paul Lambert is an aspiring collegiate journalist. A writer and broadcaster, Paul's excited to cover New England short track racing in 2022. Paul has also been published in the Boston Herald, Speedway Illustrated and on Autoweek.com.