Column By: MIKE TRAVERSE / RPW – ACCORD, NY – After scoring an opening night win at Accord Speedway, it hadn’t gone well for Andy Bachetti at the Ulster County bullring since then.
He was running well, near the front in the Battle at the Bullring STSS race, but retired to the pits. A series of sub-par finishes and dnf’s followed in the succeeding weeks.
But that all turned around for Bachetti on Friday at Accord. Taking advantage of a front row starting spot, Bachetti led flag-to-flag to get his 2nd win of the season at Accord and hopefully turn around his fortunes there.
“It’s good to get back to Victory Lane,” Andy said post race. “We’ve had a couple of issues, a couple of problems, but I think we got it back.”
Bachetti took off at the start with Scott Ferrier in pursuit. Although Ferrier was fast, Bachetti was able to open up an advantage that remained stable throughout the race and lapped traffic. A caution with 5 to go closed up the field, but Bachetti was up to the task again and was a winner by 1.3 seconds over Scott Ferrier.
Danny Tyler finished 3rd with Chris Stevens 4th and Rich Ricci Jr. 5th. Shane Jablonka was 6th, Hunter Lapp 7th, Cody Higbie 8th, Craig Mitchell 9th and Justin Holland 10th.
“I don’t know how we would have fared if we had started in the back,” Bachetti added. “But we were pretty good tonight.”
A scary moment in the Modified feature saw the 555 of Leo Fotopoulos erupt into a fireball. Fotopoulos quickly pulled into the infield and escaped safely.
For the second week in a row, the Sportsman feature had a great race for the lead. After taking the lead on a lap 7 restart, Ryan Behrent and Jared LaBagh went at it for the next 16 laps. Behrent was able to maintain the lead, but LaBagh put on all kinds of pressure.
With 23 laps completed, Behrent and LaBagh made contact while battling lapped traffic. LaBagh nearly spun but kept it going and Behrent stopped on the backstretch with a flat.
LaBagh was able to hold off Jackie Brown Jr. over the last 2 laps to take the win. Nick Plumstead continued his streak of top 5’s with a 3rd place finish. Eddie Owens had another good finish with 4th and Whitey Slavin finished 5th.
Kyle Smith led the early laps and finished 6th with Mike Travis 7th, Kevin Murphy 8th, Connor Prokop 9th and John Woinoski 10th.
Jayden Sleight was a flag-to-flag winner in the Pure Stocks on Friday. Ray Tarantino was 2nd, Shawn Williams 3rd, Gary Ronk 4th and Tom Campfield 5th.
Brandon Conklin took the win in the 4 Cylinder division with Tim DeGrote 2nd, Jeff DeGroat 3rd, Ivan Guerra 4th and George Barringer 5th.
Walter Henry IV raced to his 2nd consecutive All Star Slingshot win over Rob Charmello and Mikayla Predmore.
Brianna Reynolds was Friday’s Junior Slingshot winner with Cody Williamson 2nd, Brayden Marks 3rd and Michael Travis Jr. 4th.
Next Friday, June 14th will see the Accord Speedway Vintage Modifieds back in action along with the News Sprints, Modifieds, Sportsman, Pure Stocks and Slingshots. Northeast Napa and Powdertech are the night’s sponsors.