News Director 
Column By: MIKE TRAVERSE / RPW – ACCORD, NY – After winning his first ever Modified feature at Accord Speedway in late July, it had been a bit of a struggle for Tyler Johnston at the Ulster County bullring.
However, the young driver put all the pieces together on Friday as he drove to his 2nd win of the season.
“The last couple of weeks, we were struggling,” Johnston said. “This week, I went into the garage and ripped everything apart because I knew that there was some stuff wrong with it. And there was.”
Preferring the high groove, Johnston passed Travis Green on lap 15 and he held off 2024 Modified Champion Danny Tyler to take the win with a .68 margin of victory.
“We came to the track fast all night. Heat race time, we were battling the ruts in 3 and 4 a little bit. We didn’t change anything and we just said we were going to deal with it. We just ran above them,” Johnston said. “The middle of the track was pretty good too. But to get into the moisture up top, that was where we were the best.”
Following Tyler was Kevin Stevens with his best Modified finish at Accord with a 3rd place run. Bobby Hackel Iv was 4th with Travis Green 5th.
Completing the top 10 were Hunter Lapp 6th, Joe Judge 7th, Cody Higbie 8th, Ken Ferrier 9th and Randy Green 10th.
Despite not scoring a win during the 2024 season, Tyler emerged as the Modified champion.
This is really awesome to win the points,” Tyler said. “This is our 2nd time doing it, we won in 2017, ” Tyler said. “But it’s a weird year because we haven’t won. So it’s a strange year. As good as it is to win the points, we still have raced 18 times with no wins. We were super consistent here though. Most of our races here were top 5’s. So it was a good year in that sense.”
Steve Williams took the lead on lap 13 and held off the 2024 Accord Speedway Sportsman champion, Jared LaBagh to win a close .44 second win. Joe Judge finished 3rd, Brayden Traver 4th and Eddie Owens 5th.
Rounding out the top 10 were Ryan Behrent 6th, Darrell Quackenbush 7th, Kevin Murphy 8th, Mike Murphy 9th and Jackie Brown Jr. 10th.
Walt Henry raced to his 3rd Pure Stock win of the season on Friday. Wayne Taylor was 2nd, Gary Ronk 3rd, 2024 Pure Stock champion Jayden Sleight was 4th and Bill Deak Jr. 5th.
George Barringer was the 4 Cylinder feature winner, his first win of the season. Tim Brown was 2nd, Brett Barringer 3rd, Cadin Biondin 4th and the 2024 Accord 4 Cylinder champion Tim DeGrote 5th.
AJ Albreada was a winner for the 6th time this season in the All Star Slingshots. Matt Sabo was 2nd, Breanna Reynolds 3rd, Sophia Spear 4th and Amaziah Wright 5th.
Walter Henry IV is the 2024 All Star Slingshot champion.
Molly Hatch won the Junior Slingshot feature over 2024 champion Brayden Mark.
Modified Feature: 1 5J Tyler Johnston, 2 97T Danny Tyler, 3 83x Kevin Stevens, 4 B-97 Bobby Hackel, 5 7g Travis Green, 6 60 Hunter Lapp, 7 3J Joe Judge, 8 97H Cody Higbie, 9 24 Ken Ferrier, 10 69 Randy Green, 11 211 Kevin Ward, 12 7D Will Dietz, 13 27J Jared Miller, 14 20F Scott Ferrier, 15 83 Chris Stevens, 16 15m Dan Morgiewicz, 17 22F Billy Fiske, 18 27 Rich Coons, 19 2J Jimmy Devitt, 20 7H Lenny Helmeich, 21 19 Jackie Brown Jr., 22 22L Lucas Welau, DNS 28J John Plumstead
