Three weeks away from the race car didn’t affect Evan Ellis.
Nearly a month after winning Crate/NeSmith Late Model race during fan appreciation weekend at Magnolia Motor Speedway, Ellis returned to the track last weekend and won two $2,000-to-win NeSmith Late Model races, including a dominant performance Sunday, in which he turned a third-place start into a substantial lead (an average of six seconds or more) and an eventual win.
“It’s been a great weekend here,” said Ellis, a Plantersville native and former track points champion. “We’re gonna take another week off then head to Brunswick, Georgia, for a $10,000 race.”
Unlike Saturday night’s race, when Ellis took the lead on lap 17 and had to deal with a re-start on lap 30, Ellis nearly led from front to back, passing Jeremy Shaw early in a race that didn’t have a caution.
Ellis and Shaw had to deal with lap traffic for more than 70 percent of the race, and while Shaw briefly dropped to third, the Millport, Alabama, native found success on the higher side of the track and finished second.
“It was very tricky,” Ellis said. “I had a really good start, and I knew the longer the race went, the better I’d get. I got past them and it just took off.
“I was waiting, looking left and right, waiting on someone to get around me. But I knew the car was really good, so it’d have to be someone really fast to catch me.”
Ellis said his decision to run a hard-compound tire paid off in the 40-lap race, which saw drivers run the top shelf and cushion of the track. As usual, the middle of the corners developed their signature “black ice” consistency. For Shaw, who ran the higher side of the track for most of the race, the decision to run softer tires might have hampered his chances to catch Ellis.
The lack of restarts didn’t help, either.
“That lap traffic hung us up really bad,” Shaw said. “We ran a softer tire than we normally like to do, but there was so much moisture on the top. We felt like we could get cautions, and really felt like if that was the case, it could really work in our favor. But we had to move down in the black, and we didn’t have the tire on for that.
“I knew after (track manager Johnny Stokes) watered it, the track would be really good up there. (Turns) Three and four dusted off a little more than one and two, and we knew where we wanted to run before we went out there. When we tried to move around, it slowed us down a bit. We got our tires too hot when we got down there in the black. That let Evan get by us there in lap traffic. He was really good.”
Shaw won the weekly Crate Late Model feature Saturday night and finished 11th in the NeSmith Late Model race that night, a makeup race from earlier this season. Shaw has three second-place finishes and a third-place finish in his past five races.
“Seems like not matter how big the race is, we still run second,” Shaw said. “We won last night, the weekly show, but it seems like we have a ton of second and third place finishes. Seems like something always gets us there at the end.
“I’m really happy with how we’re running, though,” Shaw said. “The TrakStar race car is running really well for us. We’ve been running up front and leading laps. If you can up front like that consistently, you’ll get the wins. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”
Most of the action took place between the third and sixth positions, where Kyle Shaw, Chase Edge, Ryan King, and Mike Boland traded positions at one point. It was Shaw, though, who was the most consistent in dealing with lap traffic, in part because he stayed at the bottom of the track.
“We went on a bit different tire selection (hard compound), and I figured everyone else would with the way the track was running,” he said. “But I knew the further we went into it others may fall off a little bit, but we’d stay the same or maybe pick it up a little bit. We bided our time and kept making laps around the bottom.
“You watch guys, like Mike Boland, who’s raced here forever. And whenever you see him, he’s always around the bottom. I’ve just always thought, if I could get that good, that’s where I’d do it.”
In other race action, Eric Cooley won the Super Late Model race Sunday night. Shay Knight, Scott Dedwylder, Jamie Tollison, and Ryan King rounded out the top five. Justin McCree won the Street Stocks feature. Calvin Cook, Brooks Strength, Richie Stephens, and Shay Knight rounded out the top five. Bo Black won the Factory Stock feature. Brian Jones, Jason Byrd, Allen Greene, and Brad Gable rounded out the top five.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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