Ashton Winger collects his first career Lucas Oil Dirt Series win at East Bay Raceway Park holding off Hudson O'Neal and Brandon Sheppard. Winger becomes the 87th different winner in the history of the series leading all 30 laps.
Photo Credit - Lucas Oil Facebook
Dennis Erb Jr, claimed the top time honors over 60 cars tonight with Hudson O'Neal topping the Group B qualifiers. Winger would take the Heat race 1 win giving him the important pole position for the feature. Garrett Smith,Kyle Bronson,O'Neal,BShepp,and Overton took the other heat race wins. Brian Shirley,Tyler Erb,and Logan Roberson took the three B Mains. The fast time provisionals went to Dustin Mitchell and Jason Riggs.
Tuesday Feature Results
1) Winger
2) O'Neal
3) Sheppard
4) Overton
5) Dennis Erb
6) Smith
7) Gustin
8) McCreadie
9) Whitener
10) Moran
11) Herrington
12) Roberson
13) Shirley
14) Hughes
15) Wilson
16) Tyler Erb
17) Riggs
18) English
19) Bailes
20) Bronson
21) Carrier Jr,
22) Nothdurft
23) Robinson
24) Pearson Jr.
25) Drown
26) Mitchell
Winger would fire off first and led the first lap over O'Neal,Smith,Bronson,and Sheppard. Although Winger led every lap it wasn't a runaway for the pilot of the Matthews owned XR1 Rocket Chassis. His first real challenge came on lap 9 as Kyle Bronson was able to get under the leader in turn 2 but Winger went to the outside of the 40B in turn 4 to lead the lap.
On lap 17 Sheppard passed O'Neal for 4TH to try to run down, Winger and Bronson ,as the top 5 were all single file on the bottom close to each other as they were on the tail end of the lead lap cars. A lap 21 yellow for Eddie Carrier Jr. would bunch the field together with your leaderboard reading Winger,Bronson,Sheppard,O'Neal,and Dennis Erb.
The restart would have the third place Sheppard on the outside and he got a great launch to take the second position from Bronson as Garrett Smith took 5th from Erb. The final yellow would wave for the third place running Bronson as he came up lame on the exit of turn 2 right in front of Hudson with O'Neal sideswiping the slowing Rocket Chassis of Bronson. That put Overton in the top 5 for the first time of the night placing him 5th.
When the final restart went green O'Neal used the top side to get back around the B5 of Sheppard but just didn't have enough to make a serious challenge for Winger. BShepp would take 3rd with Overton , in that John Henderson Warrior Race Car , 4th and Dennis Erb would take the 5th spot again tonight.
Winger came close to winning a Lucas Oil Dirt Series race earlier at All-Tech but came up short. East Bay has been good to Winger so far in the early part of 2023 as he won the final two nights in a Crate Late Model. As they say the hardest win is that first win can Winger go back to back tomorrow night? Tune into FloRacing again tomorrow to find out if you aren't there in person as the track hosts 4 more nights of racing
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