Special from Speed51.com – Stephen Nasse appeared to be on a cakewalk to victory lane Saturday afternoon in the JEGS/CRA All-Stars Tour portion of SpeedFest 2020 at Watermelon Capital Speedway. But after dominating the first 100 laps, everything changed at the front of the field as a barrage of late cautions created a thrilling finish. After losing the lead at the white flag, Nasse battled back on the final lap to beat Willie Allen in an exciting finish to the 125-lap Pro Late Model race.
Nasse endured multiple challenges from Dawson Fletcher before trading paint with Willie Allen twice in the final five laps.
“I felt like that race should’ve been done a while ago, the cars towards the back kept bringing out the cautions, and cautions, and cautions,” Nasse said. “I knew one of them was going to come back to bite me and I wasn’t going to be able to get away from them. Sure enough, it was that last one.”
The yellow flag that Nasse was referring to was the very last of the race on Lap 124. After using a bump-and-run move on the previous restart on Lap 121, Allen managed to keep his No. 26 to Nasse’s outside on the green-white-checkered restart. One lap later, coming to the checkered flag, the two would bang doors, with Allen moving up the track and giving the final edge to Nasse.
“He jacked me up trying to get by me there, no hard feelings at all,” Nasse stated. “Honestly, I just drove in as hard as I could wanting to run the bottom and try to get by him, and things happen. I got free and got into him. To be honest, I wasn’t letting this one slip away from me, fought too hard all day.”
For Allen, there were also no hard feelings, showing great enthusiasm for the show he and Nasse had put on.
“That was a blast. I figured something out the last few restarts, found a better way to shift, kind of drove up beside him in turn one and had my line,” Allen explained. “I thought I was going to get him, I think he was turning right, and I was turning left going into three. We both drove it in hard and [Nasse] just took my line away there. Just hard racing, glad to be out here.”
As for Fletcher, his chances went away on an earlier restart after he had taken over the lead one lap prior. When Fletcher spun his tires while leading the field back to green, Nasse got back to the front, while Fletcher got tied up with Augie Grill and a handful of other drivers.
“I thought we had it,” said a disappointed Fletcher. “Had a bad restart and Augie got under us and broke. We fell back to sixth, tried working our way back. It sucks, I was working hard, kept telling myself we got this. A yellow would come out, we’d do it again, after about five times we finally got the lead, got a little loose and things went downhill from there.”
Fletcher recovered to finish fourth behind Steve Dorer, who exhibited his own recovery after spinning out early in the race. Evan Shotko completed the top five.
A full on-demand video replay of Saturday’s race will be available soon on Speed51.com.
-Story by: Connor Sullivan, Speed51 Northeast Editor – Twitter: @Connor51CT
-Photo credit: Speed51
Unofficial Results
1. Stephen Nasse
2. Willie Allen
3. Steve Dorer
4. Dawson Fletcher
5. Evan Shotko
6. Ryan Rackley
7. Daniel Dye
8. Ryan Herbert
9. Billy VanMeter
10. Harold Crooms
11. Harrison Halder
12. Austin Maynard
13. Gage Rodgers
14. Brandon Oakley
15. Rafe Slate
16. Joe Ross
17. Kyle Plott
18. Christopher Tullis
19. Augie Grill
20. Stacey Crain
21. Dylan Fetcho
22. Hayden Sprague
23. Justin South
24. Ronny Kittle
25. Russell Fleeman
26. Shane Chastain
27. Chuck Tuck
28. David Hodges
