Scott Dedwylder’s early dominance in the NeSmith Late Model Touring Series continued Sunday night with a $2,000 win at Magnolia Motor Speedway.
The Vossburg native has led or been in second place in the NeSmith points race each week of the season. After starting sixth, Dedwylder rode a harder tire compound and an unfamiliar setup to the win. He finished second at Whynot Motorsports Park in Meridian a night earlier in a 50-lap NeSmith Touring race.
“It’s a mind-game here, like at Meridian last night,” he said. “I think we could have went a little bit different at Meridian. Here, we went different than we’d ever done. You have to keep an open mind.”
Part of Dedwylder’s strategy was his tire selection, a decision that helped him hold off Brandon Williams, who ran a softer tire. Williams led for a majority of the first 20 laps, maintaining a lower line as the rest of the top 10 dabbled in the slicker top half. Williams surrendered the lead to Michael Arnold once the duo hit lap traffic, but Dedwylder, who has won twice at Magnolia this year, that proved to be built for all 40 laps.
“When you’re on hard tires, you gotta keep the edges,” Dedwylder said. “It looked like the No. 4 (Arnold) was getting a bit tight and having to work his edges a little bit. The 95 (Williams) was on all softs — they would make it, but the hard tire goes faster here.”
Williams had competed in one race at Magnolia before Sunday. He said he expected more caution flags, which would negate the advantage of hard-compound tires.
“The harder tire came on faster and developed a little bit more of a lane,” Williams said. “I know those boys were on the outside — I’m not a lane jumper — and I felt like we were still competitive on the bottom. This was a solid second-place car.”
Williams almost found an opening against Dedwylder with nine laps to go. After the final re-start of the race, Williams got an aggressive jump coming out of turn four. The nose of his car reached the number of Dedwylder’s left side, but Dedwylder built another two car-length advantage off turn two.
“I knew I couldn’t run with him the center out of the turn, so what I was building for is to gain some distance between me and the third-place car,” Williams said. “I wanted to protect second.”
Magnolia “locals” took three of the top four spots in the regional series race, as Jeremy Shaw, of Millport, Alabama, and Chase Washington, of Houlka, finished fourth and third, respectively.
“This place out here, it’s a tough place to get a hold of,” Shaw said. “We feel like when we’re all on our game we can run as good as anybody out here.
“Chase and I were pretty close to equal. He was just a touch better.”
In other action, Eric Cooley won the Super Late Model feature. Jamie Tollison, Shay Knight, Buddy George, and Jason Brock rounded out the top five.
Spencer Hughes won the Street Stocks feature, his ninth win of the season. Randy Lovell, TK King, Ronald Dunn, and Ben Keith rounded out the top five.
Tony Shelton won the 602 Late Model feature. Daniel Gann, Jonathan Pridmore, Dustin Smith, and Joey Maxwell rounded out the top five.
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