HUMBOLDT, Kan. — The Summit USMTS National Championship presented by RacinDirt hauled around the Humboldt Speedway Friday and Dereck Ramirez left ‘The Hummer’ as champion of the 16th annual USMTS Summer Fling.
Hosting the 59th USMTS main event at the Humboldt, Kan., bullring, a couple early-race yellow kept the field bunched up while Terry Phillips, who won Thursday night at the 81 Speedway, was chased by Tanner Mullens and defending USMTS National Champion Dereck Ramirez.
Meanwhile, the second caution on lap 7 saw Jake O’Neil running 13th on the grid. O’Neil had claimed two of the last three races here, including Summit King of America XI this past March and last summer’s Summer Fling, but his night began just like Thursday with problems in qualifying and taking a provisional to start the feature race from the last row.
Back up front, Phillips and Ramirez put a straight-away of distance between themselves and their pursuers when they reached lapped traffic at the race’s halfway mark. That allowed Mullens and Darron Fuqua to close in on the rear bumper of Ramirez.
With two back-markers hampering the lead pack, Ramirez snuck underneath Phillips to take the lead with 13 laps to go. Moments later, the yellow flag waved for the third time which gave clean air to the new leader and put Mullens, Tyler Davis, Dustin Sorensen, Jason Hughes and Rodney Sanders on their tails for the next restart.
Racing door-to-door in turn four, Sorensen got underneath Phillips and the two touched briefly which sent Sorensen spinning into the infield which brought out a caution and forced the USMTS points leader to the rear of the field a restart with 10 laps to go.
After that, it was clean and green with Ramirez putting together 10 flawless laps to keep Mullens behind him and score his fourth USMTS victory of the 2022 campaign. It was the 23rd career win for the 35-year-old from Woodward, Okla.
Behind Ramirez, it was Mullens pocketing another runner-up paycheck while Phillips and 14th-starting Sanders crossing the finish line in third and fourth.
The finish:
Dereck Ramirez, Tanner Mullens, Terry Phillips, Rodney Sanders, Tyler Davis, Jake O’Neil, Zack VanderBeek, Jason Hughes, Dan Ebert, Cayden Carter, Kale Westover, Dillon McCowan, Brandon Givens, Lance Mari, Jacob Bleess, Chase Holland, Kyle Brown, Carlos Ahumada Jr., Shane DeVolder, Dustin Sorensen, Dylan Thornton, Tyler Wolff, aden Phillips, Jake Gallardo, Darron Fuqua, Austin Siebert.