Column By: MARTY CZEKALA / RPW – CANANDAIGUA, NY – Tim Fuller is 55 years old and a recent Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Famer, but there’s no quit in him.
“Not as of yet,” said Fuller with a smile.
After redrawing the pole, the driver of the No. 19 led every lap in the Stars and Stripes 70 at Land of Legends Raceway to score his first Super DIRTcar Series win of 2023.
The win is Fuller’s first since 2021 at Bridgeport and the 33rd of his career.
“The pole can be a curse, but it can also help you out there in clean air,” Fuller told RPW post-race. “That pack of wolves behind me, you had to be on your A-Game. Car was really good; I wasn’t good in three and four as I wanted to be but was good enough.”
Right out of the gate for the feature, Fuller looked strong, opening a lead of as much as 3.4s on Matt Sheppard before lapping traffic. However, after the first caution, Fuller believed his car was a lot better once he controlled the field for the restart.
“As the tires warmed up, I started sliding a bit more,” Fuller said. “I never knew how far I was out there, but I knew how my car stuck after a caution.”
Sheppard would make it challenging every restart, despite Fuller’s enjoyment of clean air.
“I said holy s***, here we go again, another restart with Sheppard beside me,” Fuller explained. “He had the run on me, all he had to do was clear me, and he had the lane. I just had to fight him off on the restarts. I thought I was good enough to stay in the lead.”
“I thought if I could beat him to one on the outside, I could get the lead,” Sheppard told Mike Mallett of Dirt Track Digest. “He could stick faster than I could in one and two. I joked that if we restarted in turn two, I could’ve driven around him. He had a really good car. If it’s your night, it’s your night.”
Sheppard thought all his restarts were good tonight. The final restart was the closest he could be off-turn-two with Fuller.
“I was licking my chops when I had my nose ahead of him on the outside,” said Sheppard, whose second-place finish is his third straight in SDS. “The grip off the top of two was real far around the corner. I ended up real high and too far to get to the grip.”
After starting sixth, Peter Britten rounded out the podium and gave him his fourth top-five in the last five SDS races.
Max McLaughlin scored a fourth-place run after starting 17th, becoming the race’s hard charger.
“We were good early, just too free at the end,” McLaughlin said. “Had to use my stuff up a little hard to get up there. If I started up there, I think it might have been a different story. Wish we were better early; we’ve been horrible with qualifying the last couple of months and haven’t made a redraw since, I think, Florida.”
Outside of Fuller and Sheppard, Britten and Jordan McCreadie scored heat wins this evening.
42 drivers checked in Wednesday evening.
The Super DIRTcar Series returns to Canada in two weeks for a series of races, with two at Autodrome Drummond and a race at Brockville Ontario.