MALTA, N.Y. — Demetrious Drellos won everything except the 50/50 drawing Friday night at Albany-Saratoga Speedway, sweeping his heat, the dash and the 35-lap DIRTcar modified feature.
He led Peter Britten and last week’s winner Adam Pierson to the stripe by a full straightaway after a crowd-pleasing charge from the fourth row.
Robert Bublak and Neil Stratton brought the field to green, with Stratton immediately taking command. By lap five, Drellos had climbed to fourth and when the yellow flew two laps later, he was third and ready for action. When the green reappeared, Drellos shot into turn one lower than Stratton and second running Justin Stone and came out of turn two with the lead.
Behind Drellos, Britten and Pearson had come from 12th and 13th, respectively, and when Stratton slowed for yet another caution on lap 16 they stood second and fourth. Pearson then blew by Justin Stone for third on the restart with Mike Mahaney in tow but none of the challenger could match Drellos whether they were in the open or, after lap 27, back in traffic.
Drellos almost gave the win away in the waning laps when he got impatient and split two lapped cars, bouncing off first one, then the other, but he escaped unscathed.
“My car was really good,” tipped Drellos. “When I got to the lapped cars, I could slice and dice and work my way through them. But I had no idea how far Peter was behind me and I couldn’t wait for those lapped cars. Sometimes you just have to use the nerf bars to get through guys like that. I guarantee my mom was screaming when I did that.”
“I was hoping he’d get in trouble lapping those guys because that was my only hope,” said Britten. “He deserved to win, because he’s been good all year. We had a couple of longer runs and he started coming back to me then but before I could get close we’d have another yellow.
Pearson felt that his car was good but in the wrong place.
“The top was better tonight. I wanted to run the bottom again like I did when I won last week but it went away early and I couldn’t. We’ll be happy with third.”
Mahaney held off the hard charging Matt DeLorenzo for fourth with Jack Lehner leading a second five that included Marc Johnson, Stone, Kenny Tremont Jr and Don Ronca.
The large field of Sportsman again required two features, with Derrick McGrew Jr besting Chad Edwards and Elliot Lussier in the opener and Tim Hartman taking the nightcap with a last-lap, turn-four pass of Taylor Wasson. Andrew Buff was third.