LANGLEY, Va. — Brenden Queen kept his perfect season at Langley Speedway alive in thrilling fashion during the Visit Hampton.com 125 on Saturday evening.
Entering the evening having won all three weekly events at his home track, Queen needed a late-race restart to challenge CARS Late Model Stock Car Tour point leader Carson Kvapil for the win before muscling him out of the way on the last lap, much to the delight of the loyal Langley fanbase.
The maneuver gave Queen his first CARS Late Model Stock Car Tour victory in just his second appearance in the series.
Queen had previously accomplished his goals of winning a track championship at Langley Speedway and the facility’s most prestigious race in the Hampton Heat, but he admitted that adding a CARS Tour victory carried extra weight.
“This is as big as the Hampton Heat,” Queen said. “These guys are the best of the best and I’ve dreamed of racing in this series for so many years. I haven’t had the budget to do it and working full-time kind of messed up my racing plans, but this is why you have to come and win these races because this is where all the eyes are at.”
The path to victory lane was an adventurous one for Queen, who had to briefly leave Langley and make repairs to his No. 03 Oldskool Video Games Toyota after suffering an oil leak in practice on Friday afternoon.
Queen rebounded from the mechanical failure to qualify third, but elected to conserve his equipment and fall back during the early laps. As the finish drew closer, Queen proceeded to pick off the competition one spot at a time before finally reaching the second position behind Kvapil.
The final caution for a spin from Hayden Swank gave Queen the opening he needed to challenge Kvapil during the final shootout. Despite the opportunity, Queen still was not sure if he had a car strong enough to overtake Kvapil and knew he had to be aggressive coming to the white flag.
“I didn’t think I would get [Kvapil],” Queen said. “He was really good and I hope he ain’t mad at me. It was for the win and you have to do what you have to do. I stuck with the gameplan and I knew it was going to work. The cautions came out at the right time.”
Kvapil controlled most of the race from the pole and had a comfortable gap over Queen before Swank’s spin brought out the caution, which left him in a vulnerable position as he tried to hold the lead with worn tires.
“I didn’t want to drop back,” Kvapil said. “I felt that I would have dropped way too far back and I though the pace we were going wasn’t too fast. There were a few laps that I thought we were going a little too hard but everybody was in that little group of ours. We just didn’t have enough there on that last run.”
Kvapil holds a 27-point lead in the standings.
Chad McCumbee finished third.
“I didn’t think we had quite what we needed,” McCumbee said. “The strengths we built on in practice helped us stay where we were, but we needed just a little bit more turn [on Saturday]. We haven’t been quite where we needed to be since winning Hickory but hopefully this performance gets us there.”
The event was broadcast live by SPEED SPORT affiliate, CARSTour.tv.
The finish:
Brenden Queen, Carson Kvapil, Chad McCumbee, Kaden Honeycutt, Jacob Heafner, Connor Hall, Jonathan Shafer, Bobby McCarty, Deac McCaskill, Zack Miracle, Mason Diaz, Brandon Pierce, Andrew Grady, Janson Marchbanks, Mark Wertz, Braden Rogers, Conner Jones, Carter Langley, Hayden Swank, Chase Burrow.