Column By: MIKE TRAVERSE / RPW – ACCORD, NY – Shane Jablonka added his name to the Accord Speedway Modified feature win list with a dominating wire-to-wire win in the 35 lap feature at the Ulster County oval on Friday night.
Jablonka got a good start and went to the lead immediately at the drop of the green and even through several restarts, he was never threatened and pulled out to big leads. The 3rd Shop Mafia #44x was the only car under 14 seconds in the feature.
“The biggest thing for me in the race was searching around, I really didn’t know where to be,” said Shane in Victory Lane. “I watched the Sportsman race prior to our feature and it looked like there was something left on the bottom. But my car felt pretty good in the middle of the race in 1 & 2.”
While Jablonka’s car was dominant, the cautions were well timed during the feature so that he never had to deal with any lapped traffic.
“It worked out really well not getting into lapped traffic because I could see ahead that they were bouncing off of each other.”
While Jablonka was well out front, there was good racing for the positions behind him. Randy Green and Tyler Johnston swapped 2nd a few times before Randy finally got away from Johnston. Tyler finished 3rd with Travis Green in his best Modified finish in 4th. Rich Ricci advanced from a deep in the starting field to finish 5th.
Scott Ferrier finished 6th, Jimmy Wells 7th, Hunter Lapp 8th, Danny Tyler 9th and Chris Stevens 10th.
Last Friday, Nick Plumstead ran a great race and came up just a little short of Victory Lane as Jared LaBagh was the winner. This week, Nick turned the results around as he drove to victory in Friday’s 25 lap Sportsman with LaBagh finishing 2nd.
Impressive first year Sportsman racer Brayden Traver was the early leader with Plumstead moving to the lead on lap 5. Although LaBagh once again had good speed, Plumstead was running that much better.
Plumstead was able to pull away on every restart and after a late race restart, he was a one second winner over LaBagh with Traver an excellent 3rd. Kevin Stevens recovered from early race difficulties to finish 4th and Whitey Slavin 5th.
Jeff Higham finished 6th with Joey Conklin 7th, Kevin Murphy 8th, Pat Mann 9th and Steve Williams 10th.
The NEWS Sprint Cars had their first Accord race of the season and it was Joe Kata taking the win. Wesley Gomez was 2nd, Dan Malley 3rd, Steve Kyser 4th and Max Masker 5th.
It was a great race for the win in the Pure Stock division on Friday. Defending 2023 Co-Champion Gary Ronk really had his hands full trying to hold off a charging Bill Deak Jr. Deak had several good looks on the inside of Ronk, but he was never able to complete the pass.
Just great racing between these two which saw Ronk grabbing the win over Deak Jr.
Jayden Sleight bounced back from early race difficulties to finish 3rd with Mikey Corbin 4th and Walt Henry 5th.
The balance of the top 10 were Shawn Williams 6th, Ray Tarantino 7th, Brian Chirico 8th, George Van Ardsall 9th and John Rood 10th.
A.J. Albreda raced to his 9th straight All Star Slingshot feature win on Friday as he defeated Walter Henry IV and Braxton Dembek.
Breanna Reynolds continued her winning ways in the Junior Slingshots with Brayden Marks 2nd and Tavin Wingard 3rd.
AMA Motorcycles are at Accord Speedway on May 25th.
Car racing returns to Accord Speedway on Friday May, 31st. Modifieds, Sportsman, Pure Stocks, Junior and All Star Slingshots will be in action and the Accord Speedway Vintage Modifieds will be having their event, the J.T. Krol Memorial.
Lets hope Mother Nature will cut the vintage division a break for a change so the group can get their first event of the season completed.
Next Friday’s events are sponsored by DePietro Trucking.