Craig Lutz Fends Off All Foes To Take Tour-type Modified Win At New Smyrna
Craig Lutz Fends Off All Foes To Take Tour-type Modified Win At New Smyrna
Craig Lutz started on the pole and led all 50 laps to win Monday’s Tour-type Modified feature at New Smyrna Speedway, but it was anything but easy.
When a driver leads every lap in a race, sometimes people think that they had an easy go of it. Craig Lutz started on the pole and led all 50 laps to win Monday’s Tour-type Modified feature at New Smyrna Speedway, but it was anything but easy.
Lutz had to deal with multiple challengers, lapped traffic and two late-race restarts in order to pick up his third Tour-type Modified win at New Smyrna’s World Series of Asphalt.
Ronnie Williams was all over Lutz in lapped traffic over the final 15 laps of the race. Williams was able to get to within two car lengths of Lutz’s No. 82 Danny Watts-owned machine before he was able to start alongside Lutz on a restart with five laps to go.
Lutz chose the outside lane for the restart and got a great jump over Williams who dropped back to fourth by the exit of turn two before J.R. Bertuccio brought the caution flag out again without a lap being completed.
Williams got another chance at Lutz, but once again was stuck on the bottom for the restart. Both drivers banged side bars as they spun the tires on the restart, but Lutz was able to get away once again and Williams fell back to fourth once again.
The big beneficiary was New Jersey’s Jimmy Blewett who restarted in fourth, the second car on the outside line. He had a great restart on the first attempt before Bertuccio’s incident and nearly took the lead before the yellow flag waved. On the second attempt, Blewett jumped to second and began to close in on Lutz as the last handful of laps wound down.
Blewett had one chance at Lutz on the final lap, but Lutz took a defensive line into the corners and was able to hold off Blewett to take the checkered flag.
“We had a big lead there so I just tried to maintain. You never know if the caution would come out or not,” said Lutz in victory lane.
“I knew when we had the restart that we would have something for them once I figured out what was going on with my brake issue,” explained Blewett. “I had him off of two and down the backstretch and then the caution came out. That was pretty much my only shot. We were all out of tires at that point, but congrats to Craig and his crew. Craig is a great driver.”
Patrick Emerling, Ron Silk and Teddy Hodgdon completed the top five. Williams fell back to finish sixth over the final run.
Those who missed Monday’s 50-lap Tour-type Modified feature can watch the race replay here.