POCOLA, Okla. — Thursday night at Tri-State Speedway, Dan Ebert scored his first victory of the season with the Summit USMTS National Championship presented by RacinDirt with a flag-to-flag effort.
The inaugural USMTS King of the Ring kicked off three straight nights of racing to put a bow on the 2022 campaign, with the 34-year-old from Lake Shore, Minn., pocketing the $10,000 winner’s paycheck with his first win since August 10, 2019.
“Man, it’s just awesome. I can’t put into words what I really feel,” Ebert said. “We’ve been working so hard — lots of blood, sweat and tears that went into this — and you know, my team’s always remained positive, and I feel like as a driver you need to keep your team up. Grinding up and down the road, being close (to winning) at times… It’s easy to get down.
Down is where Ebert kept the hammer through all 40 laps of Thursday’s feature, keeping Dereck Ramirez, and then Terry Phillips behind him the entire distance.
“It’s very hard to lead races. You feel like you’re in the right groove and you just don’t know how hard to push it. We feel like we have a better handle on our regular tire situation. We’ve overheated it at times this summer so we feel like we’ve probably had a better handle on it.”
Just two cautions waved during the race with the first one happening on the opening lap when five USMTS Modifieds got collected between turns three and four.
The second came on lap 23 when Dylan Thornton’s flat tire was the culprit. On the restart, Phillips moved to the high and got around Ramirez for second. He quickly returned to the short way around the track and settled in for a runner-up finish as he held off the defending USMTS National Champion.
Behind the podium finishers, Joe Duvall bested Tanner Mullens for the fourth spot while Zack VanderBeek, Dustin Sorensen, Tyler Wolff, Rodney Sanders and Darron Fuqua completed the top 10.
The finish:
Dan Ebert, Terry Phillips, Dereck Ramirez, Joe Duvall, Tanner Mullens, Zack VanderBeek, Dustin Sorensen, Tyler Wolff, Rodney Sanders, Darron Fuqua, Carlos Ahumada Jr., Jason Hughes, Kyle Brown, Cayden Carter, Tyler Davis, Trevor Hughes, Jason Payton, Jake Davis, Shane DeVolder, Jacob Bleess, Dylan Thornton, Jason Ingalls, Jack Sartain, Lucas Schott.