It was Ladies Night at the Races sponsored by Freddie’s Club at Evergreen Speedway tonight. The NASCAR Weekly Racing Series Super Stocks saw 40 laps of edge of your seat racing with John Pierce in his #47 car and Marty Sokulski in the #13 car running door to door for pretty much the whole 40 laps. It was one of the most exciting races I have seen here at Evergreen all year. It was door-to-door all the way to the checkered flag for the two with only inches separating the two when crossing the finish line. It was almost too close to call. But in the end, it was John Pierce who had those couple of inches and took his second win of the season.
The A-Main event started out with a red flag being thrown in turn 4 of lap 1 as Joel Cox (#10) and Doug Davidson (#14) tangled and had to go to the back of the pack. Once the race started again, it was only a couple of laps, lap 3 to be exact, when a yellow was thrown as Lane Sundholm (#45) and Vince Hill (#26) locked up, again in turn 4. The #30 car of Jack Wolfe, Jr. had the lead from the green and managed to maintain his position as the race was on behind him with all drivers jockeying for position. The excitement was behind Jack Wolfe. Tom Moriarity had fast time tonight and spun a 12-car invert, so many of the fast cars were mid-pack and maneuvering their way to the front. The #22 of Lex Johnson and the #17 of Joe Constance were running door to door and right behind them was Marty Sokulski and John Pierce doing exactly the same and again right behind them was the #5 of Tom Moriarity and the #9 of Kelly Mann again, ‘door to door’. But that soon changed when Joe Constance spun, again turn 4 being the culprit, in lap 12 and brought out another yellow. So that took Joe out of that scenario and to the back of the pack. By lap 13, John Pierce had the lead, but by a very thin margin. He stayed right on his bumper. Tom Moriarity was continuing his move forward and by lap 23 he was right in the thick of things with Marty and John. Now we had 3 cars so tight you could not have put a dime between them. Talk about edge of your seat racing, this was it. Moriarity kept trying to get under Marty on every turn. As the leaders were beginning to lap the back car of Rob Guenther in the #52, Marty got clipped and his hood buckled. This caused a bit of resistance in his ability to ‘maintain’. On the next go-round, there was a 2 car spin out between turns 1 and 2 and as Moriarity and Pierce came up to this, Moriarity and Pierce tried to avoid the accident which in turn caused the #5 car of Tom Moriarity to run up over the left side of the #47 car of John Pierce, which caused damage to both cars. Hence, another yellow. Both cars were checked out by officials and determined to be in good enough shape to continue on. Now all three of the leaders had pretty much equal handicaps. Marty’s car had the hood buckled, Moriarity had suffered damage to the right quarter panel and Pierce had damage to the left side of his car. But once the race began, it seemed that Tom Moriarity’s car had suffered much more damage than the other two as he just dropped way back and ‘rode it out’. As the race continued, the door to door scenario stayed in place with Marty taking a lead by a very slim margin on lap 35 but Pierce turns it on again and moves out just a ‘hair’. By lap 39 the #2 car of John Zaretzke has secured 3rd place and is moving in, but not in enough time to cause any threat to the two up front. When that checkered flag dropped, it was SO close that the naked eye had problems. But all the officials agreed it was ultimately John Pierce whose nose went across the finish line only micro inches ahead of Sokulski. What a race! Marty Sokulski took 2nd, John Zaretzke placed 3rd, Jack Wolfe, Jr. held 4th and rounding out the top five was Kelly Mann. Kelly Mann also took the Trophy Dash for the night.
