SELINSGROVE, Pa. — Anthony Macri stood all alone, phone in hand, behind the sliding tinted doors of his team’s sparkling race hauler, unwinding after another successful night by answering the latest flood of congratulatory texts.
The 22-year-old passed on the the All Star Circuit of Champions show at Lincoln Speedway on Aug. 28 to justify a business decision with his third victory over the past four races at Selinsgrove Speedway.
Lincoln supplied stiffer competition with 36 cars and more to win at $7,300, while the Jack Gunn Memorial at Selinsgrove drew 18 cars. Still, Macri got what he came for: a seamless $5,000 for his six-second win, a bolstered notebook ahead of the track’s $20,000-to-win National Open on Sept. 25 and more confidence.
“Everything is clicking right now,” Macri said. “We’re dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s.”
Post-race with @AnthonyMacri7.
— Kyle McFadden (@ByKyleMcFadden) August 29, 2021
He’s going full blast into September aka the Month of Money.
Four wins, seven top-twos, eight top-10s, a Knoxville Nationals start, all in the last 10 races.
The latest an unassailable night at Selinsgrove: fast time, heat win, six-second victory pic.twitter.com/zReAmPBH3k
With the prodigious month of September having arrived, Macri’s direction is clear .
Other drivers and teams in Central Pennsylvania, meanwhile, aren’t as punctual. Not even the great Lance Dewease or Macri’s young counterpart, Freddie Rahmer.
Dewease and the Kreitz Racing No. 69K team don’t need much evaluation given their pedigree. But beyond a recent run of 11 straight top-five finishes, they’ve been stuck on seven wins since July 2.
How much of the lull is a drop-off in performance or noted engine gremlins? Or are the shortcomings mostly circumstantial?
Rahmer was in great position to win his first All Star Circuit of Champions feature since 2018 at BAPS Motor Speedway on Sunday, starting from pole.
He led the first 12 laps but faded to finish fourth. Like Dewease, Rahmer, too, went winless in August.
Danny Dietrich was lumped in that same category as Dewease and Rahmer, until he delivered in the most emphatic of ways Sunday at BAPS.
Dietrich ripped through the field to win from 10th, needing just one move to dismantle leader Hunter Schurenberg with three laps to go in the All Star Circuit of Champions-sanctioned event.
It was Dietrich’s first win since July 20 and his biggest win of the summer. But how much will that boost him at Lincoln, Port Royal Speedway and Williams Grove — Central PA’s main three tracks — where he has just one win combined this year?
Nine-time winner Brent Marks, meanwhile, made a quiet return from his post-Knoxville vacation. Two non-factor performances at Grandview Speedway (eighth) and BAPS (10th) sandwiched a DNF at Lincoln.
While Macri punctuated another week, remaining frontrunners have some ends to meet before big-money races such as the Tuscarora 50, the Dirt Classic at Lincoln, the Selinsgrove National Open and the Williams Grove National Open.
• Seventeen of the 28 cars that started Saturday’s All Star Circuit of Champions feature at Lincoln Speedway wrecked out or visited the work area at least once.
Cory Eliason won at the three-eighths-mile clay oval, giving the All Stars a 2-1 victory over the PA Posse this past weekend.
Friday’s program at Williams Grove was rained out.
• Tyler Courtney held off Anthony Macri in the final corner to win at Grandview on Thursday, as Dietrich delivered a timely win for himself and the PA Posse on Sunday at BAPS.
• Lance Dewease’s streak of top-five finishes ended at 11 at Selinsgrove.
The National Sprint Car Hall of Famer worked through a wreck in time trials to start second in the 30-lap feature, but wound up sixth at the checkered flag.
• Jason Shultz turned in a tip-of-the-cap performance on Saturday at Selinsgrove.
The driver of the Rilter Racing No. 35 finished fifth in the 30-lap feature from the 12th-starting spot. On a late-race restart, Schultz overtook Dewease for fifth.
• Ryan Smith notched three top-10 finishes and a pair of podium runs this past weekend.
Smith placed 10th on Thursday at Grandview and third on Sunday at BAPS in Brad Nowatarski’s Specialty Rigging No. 10x.
On Saturday at Selinsgrove, he finished second to Anthony Macri, driving the BJD Motorsports No. 6.
Post-race with @RyanSmithRacing.
— Kyle McFadden (@ByKyleMcFadden) August 29, 2021
He nearly drove by everyone from fifth to the lead using the bottom on the start.
Raced to second and challenged pole-sitter Pat Cannon early, slipped to third once winner Anthony Macri got rolling, and brought it home P2. pic.twitter.com/o8tj458yxI
• Another four-race swing is on the horizon in Central PA.
It begins with the Todd Shaffer Tribute race Friday at Williams Grove. On Saturday, it’s the Juniata County Fair Opener at Port Royal, which kicks off a string of five races over eight days at the half-mile clay oval.
Selinsgrove hosts its National Open qualifier Sunday night, while things head back to Port Royal on Monday for the Labor Day Classic.