By DAVID MILLER
Special to The Dispatch
Spencer Hughes’ right-rear tire touched every speck of dirt along the walls in the corners of Magnolia Motor Speedway Saturday night.
The 16-year-old Street Stocks driver committed to the highest line possible in the Golden Egg Classic, finding what was left of a groove that winners in the two preceding features had worked masterfully. Hughes didn’t expect the line to be there, especially not for 30 laps. And it showed on lap 22, when the right-rear of his No. 11 car smacked the wall in between turns 1 and 2.
His persistence, though, paid off when he and Dewayne Estes, with whom he’d traded the lead more than four times, hit lap traffic. Estes got hung up behind lapped cars in turn 4 on lap 24, and Hughes rode the high line for the pass and win.
“I knew I was going to drive up to [Estes’] door – I was just waiting on him to drive back up to mine,” Hughes said. “I saw my dad holding up the light sticks and I knew I had a car length or two lead. So I just started to pace myself … the motor was starting get a little hot.
“[Estes] had the car to win the race until the lap traffic.”
Estes finished second, while Lee Ray finished third. Kyle Livinggood and Rodney Wing, who won Friday’s feature, finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
Estes said he hated to lose via lapped cars, but he tipped his cap to Hughes for “racing him hard and clean.” Estes hasn’t won a feature since July 2016, and he and his crew spent the winter “struggling” with the car.
Saturday, though, was a turning point in their season, he said.
“Whatever we’ve been missing, I think we found it tonight,” Estes said. “We got close last night … we just took a wild hair and just pulled the strings and said ‘we’ll just try this … maybe it will work, maybe it won’t.’
“In the first corner, it felt like something was there. And the longer we raced, the more it was coming to me.”
Estes was coy about the details of what he and his crew discovered over the weekend.
“We figured out we had the wrong stuff on the wrong side of the car,” Estes said. “That’s all I can say.”
Hughes tried to run the bottom line for a few laps early in the race, but Estes would close the gap in each corner. He said he had no choice but to commit to the higher line.
“There wasn’t really much left to run on up there, but there was absolutely nothing on the bottom,” Hughes said. “I ran about half the race sliding up through the middle and just catching the cushion coming off. I could keep up with Dewayne, but I couldn’t gain any ground. When I saw him get into lap traffic, he kind of got pinched down there, and I knew I’d have to do something if I wanted to win the race.”
Hughes took fourth place in the Friday feature. Estes took third. Ray capped finished second Friday and third Saturday night.
“I just kept it pinned down there on the bottom,” Ray said. “I thought that lap traffic would give me a shot, but all it did was mess Dewayne up, and I got caught in that mess. I had a good car tonight, though.”
Rickman dominates SLM race
Rick Rickman left Whynot Motorsports Park last week disappointed and in search of answers.
He had failed to make the field for the $10,000-to-win World of Outlaws field at a track where he typically performs well.
“We came back home, went over the car and found some issues that we had either overlooked or that happened while we were there,” Rickman said. “We found the problem, fixed it, went over it from front bumper to rear bumper. Evidently, we fixed our race car.”
Rickman led from start to finish Saturday and was never threatened by the field, clinching his first Super Late Model win of the season.
Rickman rode the middle and high line with relative ease, capitalizing on track owner Johnny Stokes applying a generous spray of water to the top half before the features started.
“Even after I moved down later to get around some of the lap cars, it felt good right through the middle of that slick,” Rickman said. “I figured we’d have a good car, but I didn’t think it’d be anything like it was.”
In other race action:
n Chase Washington won the Nesmith Crate Late Model feature for his fifth straight feature win this season. Jeremy Shaw, Kyle Shaw, Marcus Minga and Bryant Marsh rounded out the top 5.
n Jamie Pickard won the 602 Sportsman feature. Bill Moffett, Brooke Carter, Mike Pickard and Jonathan Pridmore rounded out the top 5.
n John Beard won the Factory Stocks feature. Ellie Hughes, Bill Sudduth, Scooter Ware and Logan Lux rounded out the top 5.
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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