Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – This fell perfectly in line for Andy Bachetti on Saturday night at Lebanon Valley Speedway.
After missing his opportunity to be in the handicap for the 30-lap DIRTcar Big Block Modified feature, Bachetti charged from his 16th starting spot and was in the right spot at the right time to capture the lead when John Virgilio’s #74 slowed on lap 20.
Virgilio was forced to relinquish the number one spot and his chance at a first career Big Block win. The driver who took over was none other than Bachetti who held off all challengers to notch win number two of the 2023 season and the 62nd of his career on the High Banks.
“My team earned this win tonight,” Bachetti said. “The track threw us a curve tonight. It wasn’t what we were thinking it’d be for the heat and we missed on the set-up, but they just kept digging and here we are.”
After two straight rainouts at the Valley, Bachetti and his crew weren’t exactly sure how the racing surface was going to be at the West Lebanon, NY oval on Saturday. Unfortunately, they missed in the heat but that made the Garrity team work that much harder for the feature.
“This place seems to be changing every week,” he said. “It’s been a work in progress all season with the new configuration and we all knew that. It is what it is but that just makes me and the guys work that much harder to make it happen and I’ve got the best team in the business.”
Over the last few championship seasons at Lebanon, Bachetti has been a frequent runner in the top five with several trips to victory lane. This year, he’s been consistent but the wins haven’t been as frequent so far. That just proves how challenging the new Lebanon Valley has been in 2023.
“We’ve had to change our set-up a lot from what we had last year,” he said. “That was even true tonight. We worked and worked and worked. We weren’t even close but we came together as a team and made some right calls to make this car a winning piece.”
Bachetti made his way to the runner-up spot on a lap eight restart and began to chip away at the lead Virgilio had built up. With each click of the lap counter, Bachetti was getting closer and closer to the #74 and was able to seize his chance when trouble set in on Virgilio.
“I was just trying to be patient while also be aggressive,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to him but our car was getting better as the race went on. I would like to think we would have been able to get by John if not for his problem, but now we’ll never know.”
Being in the right place at the right time can be important, but also making sure you’ve got a car that can be in those situations when opportunity arises is key and that’s what Bachetti did on Saturday.
“I was doing everything I could to save the right rear tire,” he said. “A lot of guys were having tire troubles tonight and I didn’t want to cut a tire down. That’d take me right out of the equation but we were lucky enough to keep it under this #4 car and got the job done.”
Several front runners cut down tires during the course of the 30-lap feature including Kenny Tremont, Brett Haas and Wayne Jelley. However, the likes of Bachetti, Marc Johnson, Olden Dwyer and LJ Lombardo were able to make it the entire distance.
Johnson brought the Kevin Starchak-owned #9 home in the runner-up spot, only losing four valuable points to Bachetti in the season-long point chase. Dwyer had a strong run to finish third on the night with Lombardo in the Paul Wehnau Snap-On #35 coming home fourth. Kyle Armstrong completed the top five.
Dwyer not only had a good run in the Big Block Modified feature, he also put together a winning performance in the DIRTcar 358-Modified main event, leading every single circuit to record his first checkered flag of the 2023 season.
The Pownal, VT racer has been strong all season but has been bitten by bad luck on multiple occasions this year but on Saturday night, he put it all together.
When all was said and done, Dwyer had to hold the #12C of Andy Bachetti. Yes, you heard that right. Bachetti had troubles during his heat race and Peter Carlotto graciously gave up his race car so that Andy could race for as many points as possible as he’s in a tight battle with LJ Lombardo for the division lead.
It didn’t matter though. On Saturday, the race belonged to Dwyer.
“This feels really good to get the monkey off our back,” Dwyer said. “We had a good start to the 2023 season but have just had some bad luck. Everywhere we turned we had bad luck but my team never gave up.”
It’s amazing how a good run can flip the script on a whole season and Dwyer is hoping that Saturday’s win will do just that.
“Everyone on this crew’s been doing a great job but we’ve just been snake bit by the bad luck bug,” he said. “We’re going to get this turned around but I just have to thank everyone that’s behind this team. Without them, it wouldn’t be possible.”
Bachetti came home second and was extremely grateful to Carlotto for what he did for him.
“I can’t say enough about the Carlotto family for letting me jump in this car,” Bachetti said. “This is a good race car and their just a good family in general. They saved our night.”
Jason Herrington, Ryan Larkin and Lombardo were third through fifth, respectively, at the finish.
Defending Sportsman champion Tim Hartman Jr. has run off an impressive streak of nine top 2 finishes, marking back to the closing races of 2022. Well, on Saturday, he ran that streak to 10 as the MRP Companies #22 found his way back to victory lane for the third time this season.
Hartman took the lead from Cody Cordova on lap 7 and never looked back to take the checkered flag.
“This has been an awesome run for us,” Hartman said. “To be able to win another one is cool. The start was a little goofy. I don’t think we were lined up right but it benefited us and we were able to get to the front.”
Charge was the name of the game for Hartman in the 20-lap main event as he was able to race from his seventh starting position to third by the second lap. He then got around second place runner Chris Lynch just two circuits later and then took the lead from Cordova on the seventh circuit.
Nobody else had a challenge for the winner on this night.
“We had some contact early on in the race on the backstretch and honestly, I thought we were done,” he said. “Luckily, we came out of it on the other side with a pretty clean car and we were able to make it work.”
As the race went on, there were several cautions that bunched the field up and put the likes of Lynch and Whitey Slavin on the back bumper of the #22. However, nobody was able to get around Hartman.
“I saw Whitey on that last restart and before that it was Chris,” he said. “Both of them are really good here and I knew I had to hit my starts good. I tried to go when they weren’t ready for it. A couple times I don’t think I did that but I was able to get a run down the straightaway and take their lane away going into turn one. Luckily, I was able to clear them and then have a couple clean laps after that to seal the deal.”
Slavin and Lynch crossed the line second and third, respectively, with Rob Maxon finishing fourth and Kevn Ward, who crashed hard in his heat race and started last on the field, completing the top five.
Veteran Frank Twing made a return to racing at the Valley a few weeks back and on Saturday night, he made his way back to victory lane, taking the 20-lap Pro Stock feature.
Twing had to hold off defending champion Chad Jeseo and Zach Sorrentino lap after lap if he wanted to score the victory and he was able to do just that.
Jeseo mounted a last lap charge on the drive of the #317, attempting a slingshot move off the final corner to the inside but it wasn’t enough as the “Wild Twing” took Colin Rescott’s checkered flag for the first time in eight years.
“Honestly, we took the green flag and two laps in, I thought we were in trouble because this thing was junk,” Twing said. “I couldn’t get on the throttle. I had to drive it like an old lady but it ended up pulling down the straights good.”
Then, he saw the champ.
“We had a caution and I saw Chad (Jeseo) next to me, and I felt maybe I could get a second tonight because he’s going to drive off,” he said. “However, we got it done. Third time out with this new car and here we are in victory lane. I guess I have to be happy.”
Jeseo came home second with Sorrentino third, Steven Larochelle fourth and Fred Lee finishing in fifth.
Anthony Maxon captured his second Limited Sportsman feature event win of 2023 on Saturday, holding off Mike Arnold, Craig Coons, Connor Crane and Frank Twing Jr.
Dave Striebel Jr. crossed the line first in the Street Stock feature event with Rocco Procopio, Dave Striebel Sr., Chris Stalker and Peter Huntoon completing the top five.
As of Saturday night when Lebanon Valley released the results of the features, this event was listed as unofficial.
MODIFIED FEATURE RESULTS 1) Andy Bachetti** 2) Marc Johnson* 3) Olden Dwyer 4) L.J Lombardo 5) Kyle Armstrong 6) Keith Flach 7) Kyle Sheldon 8) Brian Berger 9) Brett Haas* 10) J.R. Heffner* 11) Ryan Darcy 12) Kenny Tremont Jr. 13) Wayne Jelley 14) Kolby Schroder 15) Mike King 16) Tommy Corellis 17) John Virgilio 18) Eddie Marshall 19) Ryan Charland 20) Jeff Sukup 21) Timothy Davis 22) Brandon Lane 23) Josh Marcus 24) Matt Pupello*
358 MODIFIED FEATURE RESULTS 1) Olden Dwyer* 2) Andy Bachetti* 3) Jason Herrington 4) Ryan Larkin 5) L.J Lombardo* 6) Lorne Browe* 7) Ray Hall JR. 8) Jeff Watson 9) Kevin Petrucci* 10) Donny Travaglin 11) Kim Lavoy 12) Brian Petrerson 13) Montgomery Tremont 14) Ryan Charland 15) Jeffrey Reis 16) Ryan Heath 17) Brian Sandstedt 18) Mark Pullen 19) Joey Coppola 20) Alan Houghtaling 21) Peter Carlotto
SPORTSMAN FEATURE RESULTS 1) Tim Hartman*** 2) Whitey Slavin* 3) Chris Lynch 4) Rob Maxon 5) Kevin Ward** 6) Brady Cordova 7) Ricky Davis 8) Gary O’Brein 9) Karl Barnes 10) Kevin Ames 11) Jim VanZandt 12) Cody Cordova 13) Keith Johannessen 14) Alan Houghtaling 15) Bob Fachini 16) Matt Burke
PRO STOCKS FEATURE RESULTS 1) Frank Twing* 2) Chad Jeseo* 3) Zach Sorrentino* 4) Steven LaRochelle 5) Fred Lee 6) Rick Duzlak 7) Shawn Perez JR. 8) Brian Keough 9) John Rivers 10) Katrina Foster 11) Mike Dianda 12) Dave Stickles** 13) Tom Dean* 14) Tom O’Connor 15) Dave Kokindo 16) Shawn Perez
LIMITED SPORTSMAN FEATURE RESULTS 1) Anthony Maxon** 2) Mike Arnold 3) Craig Coons* 4) Connor Crane 5) Frank Twing JR.* 6) Brian Walsh* 7) Alex Palmer-Sawyer 8) Mike Engwer 9) Owen Lewis 10) Scott Zehnacker 11) Harold Rabitalle* 12) Matt Jordan 13) Kent Clark 14) Ira Doull 15) Greg Decamp
UNOFFICIAL STREET STOCK FEATURE RESULTS 1) Dave Striebel JR. 2) Rocco Procopio* 3) David Striebel 4) Chris Stalker*** 5) Peter Huntoon 6) Jim Dellea 7) Jeff Meltz SR.* 8) Franklin Smith 9) Ray Royals 10) Lou Gancarz