MINERSVILLE, Pa. — In an exciting run to the finish, Mike Gular held off a determined Timmy Buckwalter over the final five laps to take his second modified victory in three weeks at Big Diamond Speedway.
Michael Burrows also won for the second time this season in the USS Achey Open Sportsman division while Tyler Peet won his first race of the season in the Savage 61 Crate 602 class.
In the Red White and Blue Autos Roadrunner division, it was Andrew Fayash III with a last-lap pass of Alex Schoffstall to take the big win.
Shawn Light and Mike Lisowski ledthe 24-car field to the start in the 25-lap Insigner Performance Modified feature race with Light taking the front spot on the start. A lap-two yellow would slow the action. Back to racing and Lisowski would take over the lead with Light, Rick Laubach and Mike Gular in hot pursuit but before a lap can be completed the car of Nick Rochinski would go around in turn three.Â
Gular would take the lead on the restart but a multi-car pileup in turns one and two would bring out the red flag and stop the racing. Cars involved were last week’s winner Brett Kressley, Light, Scott Albert, Loudon Reimert, Andy Burkhart, Dillon Steuer, Kevin Beach and Ryan Krachun. All drivers were okay but Kressley, Reimert and Burkhart were done for the night. When we finally returned to racing, it was Gular back to the lead and start to pull away until a lap four yellow slowed the action once again.
The lap four yellow would turn out to be the last stoppage of the race and when we went back to racing it was Gular who would pull away from his competitors as the battles raged behind him. Ninth-place starter Timmy Buckwalter was on the chip as he steadily moved up through the field and took over the runner-up spot on lap nine. Buckwalter was on a mission on this Friday night as he slowly started to make Gular’s big lead dissipate.
As the field took the five-lap-to-go signal from starter Jeff Merkel, Buckwalter had caught Gular by working the inside to perfection. Gular who was having trouble keeping his car down low as the race progressed was able to hold his line in the middle to top and stay ahead of Buckwalter who was charging the inside every lap.
It looked like Gular was going to have a hard time holding off Buckwalter, but lapped traffic was Gular’s friend tonight as he was able to use the car of Heath Metzger as a pick to hold off Buckwalter and take the big win and the $3,200 first place winners’ money.
Buckwalter’s gallant effort found him in second place with a charging Jeff Strunk in third. Point’s leader Duane Howard was fourth with Lisowski finishing in fifth.