WEST HAVEN, Vt. – Tim LaDuc headlined the list of winners on a busy night of racing Saturday at Devil’s Bowl Speedway.
Tim LaDuc sliced through the field from 11th starting position to reach second place by the halfway mark. A pair of quick restarts on lap 16 bunched the field and allowed LaDuc to mix it up with early leader Jimmy Davis, and LaDuc took the lead at lap 17 to sail away over the balance of the race for the 55th win of his Devil’s Bowl Speedway career.
Davis was second for his best result of the season. Marty Kelly III was in tight battles for position throughout the race before finishing third.
Unofficially, Justin Comes – who finished sixth in the race – is the new championship leader with 856 points over Demetrios Drellos (847) – who raced elsewhere on Saturday and forfeited the point lead – and LaDuc (845), with two point-counting events left.
Troy Audet came from 17th starting position to run down Evan Roberts in the final three laps of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Limited Sportsman feature. The duo switched lanes twice as they ran in lapped traffic, and Audet stole the lead from Roberts in the final corner, leading only the last 100 yards of the race. Audet’s win was his third in a row and fifth of the season, adding to his lead in the championship points.
Chris Murray passed Chuck Bradford for the lead on lap 11 of the super stock feature, just before the race’s only caution flag. Bradford made Murray work hard to keep the lead in the final four laps, and Bradford was ahead in turn three on the final lap, but Murray beat him in a sprint to the finish by 51-hundredths (0.051) of a second.
The Mahoney family had a big night, as brothers Adam and Griff and cousin Mark all ran at or near the front throughout the race mini stock A feature. Adam Mahoney, a rookie, won for the second time. Point leader Chris Sumner snuck past Griff Mahoney for the runner-up position with two laps left.
Rookie Chase Allen won the mini stock B feature for the second week in a row, holding off a determined late-race charge from veteran Ronnie Alger.
Kamden Duffy, 13, earned his sixth win of the season with a large margin of victory in a caution-free 500cc mini sprint race. Roger LaDuc, 65, is the brother of Sportsman Modified winner Tim LaDuc.