Michael Page sounded almost apologetic after winning Thursday night’s 40-lap DirtonDirt.com Shootout at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway. He was certainly happy to claim a $5,000 check in his second start back from a lengthy hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the circumstances of his relatively ho-hum, flag-to-flag triumph left him in less than a celebratory mood.

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“Not much of a race, but …,” Page said, his voice trailing off after accepting congratulations for his success. “(The car) was extremely good really. I just wish we had a racetrack and could’ve put on a show, because that was no show. This follow-the-leader (racing) … the fans, nobody wants to see that.”

Page, 37, of Douglasville, Ga., was in position to benefit from the conditions that made passing difficult on the 3/8-mile oval; he started from the pole and just had to keep his rivals behind him. The driver of Troy Baird’s Stinger Race Car did that with aplomb, surviving a brief midrace challenge from Shane Clanton of Zebulon, Ga., while working lapped traffic and a near-miss with the slowing car of Dawsonville, Ga.’s Donald McIntosh before pulling away following three restarts among laps 24-26 to beat Clanton by 1.297 seconds.

But sucking around the inside hub to emerge victorious didn’t excite Page, who stressed that Senoia’s slick, gray clay surface usually provides some of the best racing in the Southeast.

“I thought it was gonna be pretty good,” Page said of Thursday’s conditions. “Like on the start of the race, I was gonna run the middle, not knowing really where to be because it was like top-to-bottom (at that point). And then, from like one lap to the next, it got from being I thought to be good, to just being so dirty and crappy. It just went the wrong way really quick.

“It don’t take much (to dirty a track). They had the bottom with no water on it, it was like loose dirt, so a couple cars (run there) and, before you know it, it’s throwing (crumbs) across the track and it can’t keep clean. Then you just have no choice but to run around the bottom in the cleanest part of the track.”

The night wasn’t completely uneventful for Page, however. The race that earned him the feature’s pole starting slot — the six-lap dash for the six fastest qualifiers in the 43-car field — proved memorable.

Page led the dash until the final lap when Clanton executed a classic slider through turns one and two to surge ahead. But Page crossed under Clanton down the backstretch and the two Peach State racers slid around turns three and four side-by-side. As Page nudged in front and coasted slightly up the track in turn four there was contact — Page’s right-rear corner to Clanton’s left-front nose — and Page sped off to win and clinch the pole.

Clanton was agitated by the scrape and displayed his displeasure after the checkered flag by staying on the gas and spinning Page in turn two. Page’s crew then angrily met Clanton at the infield scales, and when Clanton pulled away he turned his Skyline Motorsports Capital Race Car onto the middle road in the infield and came nose-to-nose with Page’s machine. The combatants sat that way for a moment while gesturing at each other from inside their cockpits.

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Page viewed the dash’s last circuit as good, hard racing.

“He come in there and slid me (in turns one and two) and I just turned up under him,” Page said in a phone interview. “We went down into (turn) three and we entered about the same. I just kind of held my own. I drifted up a little, but he still had the top if he wanted to be up there. I was expecting him to come back up under me, so he just stayed right there and I guess I just rubbed him a little.

“I mean, it’s his choice to back off … I’m ahead of him. But he didn’t. I’m sure he says I run him up the track, but … Then after I took the checkered flag he come up there and spun me out.

“I didn’t feel like I did nothing,” he added. “I was trying to win the race, but I don’t feel like I did nothing but race.”

Clanton, 44, offered a different take on the incident.

“I slid him and I cleared him all the way, and when he slid me he didn’t clear me,” said Clanton, who was coming off a $4,000 victory the previous Thursday night at Tri-County Racetrack in Brasstown, N.C., in his first start back from the break in action due to the coronavirus crisis. “He got me in the left-front tire, left-front fender, and all that.”

Explaining his post-checkered contact with Page, Clanton added in a phone interview: “It’s just one of them deals when somebody keeps running over you, the same thing, it’s time to retaliate.”

That comment speaks to the rivalry that has developed in recent years between Clanton and Page, a magnetism that seems to often draw the two together in heated competition. There was, for instance, contact between the pair as they battled for the lead early in Senoia’s Souther All Star event May 19, 2018 — a race Page won over Clanton — but there have been other encounters as well, in other races at Senoia and such far-flung places as Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.

“Four or five times,” Clanton said. “It’s like every time we race. And it’s always for the lead or first or second, so it ain’t like we both don’t have fast race cars.”

Page was in agreement with the suggestion that there’s a pattern of on-track confrontation between the two Georgians.

“Well, we just can’t race together, you know what I mean?” Page said. “No matter what I do, I’m in the wrong. And it’s happened a few times. It’s like I’m supposed to give him the whole track when I get around him. I mean, if I’m getting lapped or I’m running 15th or 20th, it’s one thing, but hell, we’re racing. I don’t really understand it.

“It’s weird, because we come from the same kind of background. Ronnie Dobbins, the guy (Clanton) used to race for, we both come from him (backing from Dobbins). We both come from (growing up at the defunct) Seven Flags (Speedway), in Douglasville.

“I don’t know,” Page continued. “He treats me like I’m a young kid, but I’m 37 years old. That’s what aggravates me.”

The drivers did speak, albeit briefly, after the feature. After Page was brought in front of the empty grandstands to be closer to the broadcast camera for an interview with announcer Michael Despain, he crossed paths with Clanton on his way back to the racing surface.

“He said, ‘That’s not the way you’re supposed to race,’ ” Page related of his conversation with Clanton. “He said, ‘You had me all up in the wall in the (dash).’ I said, ‘No I didn’t, Shane. I might not have given you the line you wanted, but you was not against the wall. You had plenty of room. You could have went on higher. I mean, it’s your choice to run in my quarterpanel. I don’t know what you were doing.’”

Clanton’s description of the discussion: “I just told him, I said, ‘I drove you as clean as I could possibly drive you in the race. I just want the same respect. That’s all I’m asking. I didn’t run you in the outside wall like you did me. Just give me a little bit of respect like I’m giving you.’ That’s all I said.”

Was there a resolution of their differences after the talk, an agreement to disagree? Not exactly.

“He might not do it again next time,” Clanton said of Page. “We’ll just see the next time we race.”

“I’m about fed up with it,” Page said. “I’ve had enough of it.”

There weren’t any additional fireworks between the two in the feature. Page had the upper hand throughout the distance.

Clanton would have liked to see if his chances would have improved if he had won the dash, but he conceded that he didn’t quite stack up with Page in the headliner.

“I’d like to have been on the pole,” said Clanton, who will return to Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series racing on May 12-13 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo. (he also plans to enter the May 15-16 World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series events at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Mo.). “I’d have liked for him to have to be chasing me instead of me chasing him. The way it played out, the inside guy could start the race when he really wants to.

“He may have beat from the starting on the outside anyway once we put hard tires on (for the feature),” he continued. “We both put hard tires on and his car was a little bit better than mine in the race. Not much, but … I feel like in the dash I was a lot better than him, but not in the feature. When he got out there two or three car lengths, that’s about where we could ride.”

Page, meanwhile, felt confident about his chances after outgunning Clanton at the initial green flag of the 40-lapper.

“I knew I had to get him on the start there where I could have an option, but the car was really good,” Page said. “We just redid it and updated it. It’s like a ’16 (Stinger), but it’s been a good one.”

Just being back behind the wheel was satisfying for Page, who makes his living as a Dirt Late Model racer.

“Not getting to race has been driving me insane,” Page said. “I just hope we get some more racing. My stuff’s good. I got my stuff good. Got an unknown, off-brand car, and I don’t have all those people (as crew members like national teams). It makes me feel good about what we do.”