Column By: ADAM CORNELL / RPW – LAFARGEVILLE, NY – On Friday night, Taylor Caprara, of Watertown, NY, achieved next-level success with a victory in the Whitesboro Plow Shop DIRTcar 358 Modified feature at Can-Am Speedway.
The Caprara family has been involved in racing for years in the North Country of New York State. At one point, not too many years ago, the Caprara’s owned Can-Am Speedway itself.
Back then, Taylor was racing in the Sportsman modified class, making some noise with multiple victories. Friday night was his first win at the 358 modified level, and he did it in exciting fashion.
Caprara’s night started with an average showing in the heat races, where he started fourth and finished fourth. This was good enough to get him into a sixth starting position in the feature. He moved up to fifth position rather quickly in the main race, behind drivers RJ Tresidder, Tyler Meeks, Preston Forbes and Jeff Sykes. By lap five, Caprara was in fourth position. He battled Preston Forbes for third position for several laps, swapping positions a couple of times before finally grabbing hold of third place in lap twelve. Then it became a battle of 21s, as Caprara in his 21C climbed up onto the tail of the 21R of RJ Tressider as they sparred for second position. Meanwhile, the race leader, Tyler Meeks, was far ahead of the field.
Caprara moved into second position by lap sixteen and then only had a few laps remaining to catch up to Meeks. With just four laps remaining, Caprara closed the large gap Meeks had created over the field, as they started getting into lapped traffic. In lap 23, Meeks took the high line through turns one and two, while Caprara ducked under a lapped car and took the inside line. They both came out on the back stretch with barely a playing card’s width between them. Caprara alternated his technique through turns three and four, as he went high through the turn while Meeks ducked low. The maneuver paid off for Caprara, as he powered out of turn four right past Meeks and had the lead along the straight away heading into the final two laps. It wasn’t over yet, however, as Caprara came up on two lapped cars and had to perfectly thread the needle through turns three and four to avoid having Meeks get a shot at retaking the lead.
As he headed down the back stretch on the final lap, it looked clear that Caprara had more power and more grip through the corners than Meeks, and the FX Caprara Car Companies-sponsored, yellow, blue and orange number 21C was heading to victory lane for the first time in his career. Meeks, for his part, pulled alongside Caprara on the cool down lap to congratulate him in a great show of sportsmanship.
The closest he had come to victory previously was a second-place finish at Can-Am Speedway back on June 10th. One week later he posted a third-place finish. Caprara put up back-to-back top-five finishes in the two weeks prior to his victory Friday night, so the win wasn’t a fluke or through sheer luck, it was the culmination of top-tier finishes and years of experience racing on the Can-Am surface.
“I didn’t see Tyler when I got to him, but I knew we had a fast car. When I finally got up to him, I had no power steering for five laps, so we were just doing everything we could to just hold it together,” Caprara said, as he spoke with Can-Am Speedway track announcer, Tim Baltz, after the race. “It was very forgiving as we rolled through the corners down there, fortunately.”
When it came to the move that gave him the lead with two laps to go, Caprara had this to say, “We snuck it in there in three and four, but I knew I had to get it back down to the bottom because once he saw we were going fast on the bottom he was going to try to move down and take that spot. The track was really technical tonight, very racy. The surface was really good, it’s always smooth as glass here.”
“We’ve won a lot of big sportsman races,” Caprara continued. “But this one is probably one of my favorites. We’ve been trying to do this for most of my life. We’ve really been working for it. To finally be up here, I can’t hardly believe it.”
Despite some of his good finishes this year, Caprara did have an 18th place finish, a 25th and a 20th DNF on the year. Those finishes didn’t award enough points for him to have a shot at the track championship, but the victory did move him up to 8th position in points for the year which is still quite respectable.
No matter what the points say, the victory Friday night was a highlight of Caprara’s 2022 season at Can-Am.
He will have to wait an extra week to try for back-to-back victories, as Can-Am Speedway takes a week off in late August and will return to racing Friday, August 26th.