Hearn & Tremont Win At Lebanon, But They Weren’t The Story

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – Saturday night at the Lebanon Valley Speedway was a tale of the tape. Sure the box score will say that Brett Hearn and Kenny Tremont took home victories on the double features night, but all everyone will be talking about is the multi-car accident that marred the first main event.

It all began a lap into a restart, just before the one-third mark of the event. That was when veterans Kenny Tremont and Eddie Marshall were racing side-by-side as they came out of turn four while running for the third position. Both cars were at speed when they started to move up exiting the corner. Through close quarters racing, Marshall’s car made contact with the outside pit gate and spun around, facing on-coming traffic.

It was then that the several cars made contact with the Marshall machine. What resulted was a parking lot with several heavy hitters getting collected.

Andy Bachetti, Kyle Armstrong, Paul Gilardi, King, Elmo Reckner, Wayne Jelley, Chad Jeseo Matt Pupello and Rob Pitcher were all collected. Many cars torn up, and while there were some sore drivers, thankfully, all walked away.

Marshall’s car was done for the evening, as was many from the accident. Pitcher’s #17 Teo got airborne and slammed hard to the ground, resulting in a bruised driver from Chatham, NY.

“Eddie got into the pit gate off four and he collected King and everyone else,” he said. “I had a plan to go through the center of the whole mess, but that started to close up. When I got tucked down below, down by the jersey barrier, it was all wet down there, and when I turned, I spun and there wasn’t much I could do.”

The impact of the accident left his Teo Chassis in need of major repair.

“Hopefully we can get this car back together,” he said. Going to need some parts, but the chassis is the big thing. The rear frame rail where the panhard mount connects is pushed out about two inches. Hopefully we can get this fixed and get it back here.”

For a driver who’s had his share of accidents, this one will sit in the memory bank.

“I’m feeling it now, but I’m sure I’ll feel this one Sunday morning,” Pitcher said. “It was a hard hit man. That was probably one of the hardest hits I’ve ever taken, and I’ve taken some good ones in the past 30 years.”

For Armstrong, he was totally taken by surprise.

“I thought I was going to be okay,” he said. I was driving through it all and then, all of the sudden, I’m going backwards and getting collected.”

Mike King’s car was heavily damaged as well in the accident. It’s another machine which will need chassis work to get back into competition.

“The car’s got to go to Pete’s (Chuckta, PMC Race Cars) for some non-structural repairs,” he said. The main part of the cage appears okay though.”

King recounts what took place as the cars exited turn four.

“The track was completely blocked,” he said. “I turned my car to prevent major damage and backed it in. That’s when I hit Eddie then got hit by Pitcher.”

What was lost in all of this was the fact that fourth-place starter Brett Hearn went out and destroyed the field, taking the lead from Kyle Hoffman and went on to record win #896 of his career. JR Heffner, Kenny Tremont, Keith Flach and LJ Lombardo rounded out the top 5.

In feature event number two, Kenny Tremont passed Denny Soltis on lap 12 and was never challenged the rest of the way as he went on to take his first win of 2017.

“When the car goes that good, it’s a pleasure to drive,” Tremont said after the race. “It was an absolute pleasure to drive. The guys had it right on the money. I was just debating how hard to drive it as it got better and better as the race went on.”

With two top three finishes on the evening, Tremont knows he had a great evening, especially when many of his fellow competitors did not.

“We’re happy,” he said. “The car ran well and everything’s in one piece, so we’ve got no complaints. Hopefully we can stay with it all year and we can keep this car running as well as it did tonight.”

Elmo Reckner, Keith Flach, Brett Hearn, and JR Heffner finished off the top 5 in race #2.

Chad Pierce had everything go his was in Small Block competition on Saturday night. The Eagle Bridge, NY driver easily won his heat race and used a good starting position to lead every lap of the feature enroute to his first win since 2015.

“This was definitely our type of track tonight,” he said. “The car was definitely good having an up front starting spot helped, but my guys worked their tails off to make the car this good. It’s a total team effort.”

Pierce may have made it look easy, but there was one car that he was afraid of, and that was the 115 of Kenny Tremont, who fell back early and then brought out the races only caution with about four laps in the books.

Tremont would make his way to pit road for repairs, restarted in the rear of the field and worked his way back to the front, eventually finishing fifth at the checkers.

Timothy Davis finished second, followed by JR Heffner, Brett Haas and Tremont.
In Pro Stock action, the busiest race of the night almost looked like a sleeper for the win as Rick Duzlak had checked out on the field, at one point opening up a full straightaway lead on the field. That was until a caution just as Jay Corbin and Rob Yetman entered the top three slowed things.

Over the final laps, Corbin would find trouble and have to go pitside while Duzlak was left to find off the defending track champion Yetman through the closing stages of the race.

As the cars took the white flag, Yetman had his #7 tucked right under the rear bumper of the leaders #29 machine. As they exited turn four coming to the checkers, they two were door slamming the whole length of the frontstretch. By the narrowest of margins, Duzlak held on for the win, and then lost it after crossing the finish line. He backed his car into the fence, but it didn’t matter. He left the track with the checkered flag.

“Rob was really pushing me hard the final few laps,” Duzlak said. “Not sure why he was running me like that, but he wasn’t going to take this win away from me. My guys work so hard on this thing. I can’t thank Greg (Baumli) and everything enough for their tireless effort. More wins are coming this year.”

Chuck Towslee, Steven LaRochelle, and Jason Meltz rounded out the top 5 in a wild Pro Stock main.

They say the first win is the hardest to get, well, for Connecticut’s Chris Lynch, that took his family almost two decades before he crossed the line first last June. Win number two took less then one season to get as he picked up the biggest triumph of his career, the 6th Annual Andrew Sherman Memorial and pocketed a cool $2,000 in the process.

“This was an amazing night,” he said after the win. “I can’t believe we did it. We “parked it” in the biggest race of our season. I love this and it’s all for those who support our program. Wow, just wow!”

After Lynch got the lead, he was never challenged again as Michael Sabia, Robbie Knipe, Kevin Arnold and Bobby DeLeon rounded out the top 5.

Jay Casey, Tom Murphy and Al Relyea all took home Pure Stock wins on the evening with Gary O’Brien taking checkers in the heldover Boomer’s Pure Stock Clash.

News & Notes…
For Brian Berger, the 2017 has been to forget so far as motor issues have now plagued the team in both nights of points.

Saturday, during the first feature, the engine in the #60 Phaze3 Racing Bicknell expired without warning, ending his night and leaving the Castleton, NY driver 19th in points.

“The engine let go, again,” he said. “There was no way I could have seen it coming. It let go at full throttle as I was going down the frontstretch. We’ll see how bad it is and where we go from here.”

Mike Keeler is another that had engine problems in the first feature. The #55 Teo Pro Car was running in the top 10 late in the going of the early main but problems ensued, forcing the young driver pitside.

“When I got the car back to the pits, it was ticking like crazy,” he said. “Not sure if it’s a bearing or what not, but it’s not worth doing more damage so we are done for the night.”

Keeler & company didn’t stick around the watch the second main event, electing to head back to the shop to work and decipher what the problem was.

Kyle Hoffman looked to be on his way to a sure fire top 5 finish only to have an engine failure in the first feature as well.

The driver from Averill Park, NY ended up having contact with Keith Flach late in the initial feature that sent the number 16 into the inside wall and out of the race. Come to find out, Hoffman knew something was wrong with his motor so he was trying to move his way to the bottom so he could finish out the event. That didn’t pan out the way he had hoped.

For LJ Lombardo, you couldn’t get the smile off his face after the first race. With his first top five at Lebanon, Lombardo continues to get more and more comfortable with each passing lap he takes.

The Connecticut campaigner came home 12th in the nightcap.

Paul Gilardi had a nice rebound after being involved in the first feature wreck. The Superior Seamless Gutters #87x ran in the top 5 for the entire second feature only to be passed by Heffner on the final lap. He would bring his HigFab Chassis home in sixth.

On the strength of three straight top 5 finishes to start 2017, Keith Flach finds himself on top of the point standings by eight markers over Andy Bachetti. Bachetti was involved in the first feature accident, made repairs and battled back to finish eighth.

He decided to take his backup car out to run the second feature and had problems in his heat. He did, however, start deep in the field (19th) and work his way to another eighth place finish. It was a great rebound on the night for what could have been devastating to his point title hopes.

Modified Results 05/20/2017 (30 Laps) -1) Kenny Tremont Jr, 2) Elmo Reckner, 3) Keith Flach, 4) Brett Hearn, 5) J.R. Heffner, 6) Paul Gilardi, 7) Wayne Jelley, 8) Andy Bachetti, 9) Chad Jeseo, 10) Steve Hough, 11) Kyle Armstrong, 12) L.J Lombardo, 13) Matt Pupello, 14) Kolby Schroder, 15) Ken McGuire 16) Denny Soltis, 17) Kyle Sheldon, 18) Olden Dwyer, 19) Mike Keeler, 20) Mike King, 21) Brian Berger, 22) Rob Pitcher, 23) Eddie Marshall, 24) Kyle Hoffman, 25) Dave Mcfeeters

Modified Results (from make-up 05/06/2017) (30 Laps) – 1) Brett Hearn, 2) J.R. Heffner, 3) Kenny Tremont Jr, 4) Keith Flach, 5) L.J Lombardo, 6) Wayne Jelley, 7) Steve Hough, 8) Andy Bachetti, 9) Kolby Schroder, 10) Denny Soltis, 11) Kyle Armstrong, 12) Kyle Hoffman, 13) Elmo Reckner, 14) Olden Dwyer, 15) Ken McGuire 16) Mike Keeler, 17) Brian Berger, 18) Kyle Sheldon, 19) Eddie Marshall, 20) Paul Gilardi, 21) Matt Pupello, 22) Mike King, 23) Rob Pitcher, 24) Chad Jeseo,

Small Block Modified Results (24 Laps) – 1) Pierce, Chad* 2) Davis, Timothy 3) Heffner, J.R. 4) Haas, Brett 5) Tremont, Ken Jr 6) Sandstedt, Brian 7) Hoard, Frank III 8) Hall, Ray Jr 9) Drellos, Demetrios* 10) Dwyer, Olden* 11) Herrington, Jason 12) Harper, Frank 13) Houghtaling, Alan 14) Davis, Ricky 15) Pitcher, Brandon 16) Tompkins, Jason 17) Mandel, Sean 18) McQuire, Bryan 19) Carlotto, Pete 20) Sabia, Michael 21) LaVoy, Kim

Sportsman Results (20 Laps) – 1) Chris Lynch, 2) Michael Sabia, 3) Robbie Knipe, 4) Kevin Arnold, 5) Bobby DeLeon 6) Kevin Ward, 7) Jeff Watson, 8) Rob Maxon, 9) Alan Houghtaling 10) Whitey Slavin, 11) Frank Hoard Jr, 12) Lem Atkins 13) John Virgilio, 14) Cody Ochs, 15) Nikki Ouellette, 16) Colin DuBois 17) Dan Lyle, 18) Vinnie Visconti 19) Harold Robitaille 20) Nick Plumstead, 21) Mike Gramolini,

Pro Stock Results (20 Laps) -1) Rick Duzlak, 2) Rob Yetman, 3) Chuck Towslee, 4) Steven LaRochelle, 5) Jason Meltz, 6) Victor Hopkins, 7) Paul LaRochelle, 8) Rich Crane, 9) Tom O’Connor 10) Todd Hoffman, 11) Rick Dempsey, 12) Henry Warner, 13) Sparky Reilly, 14) Brian Keough, 15) Joe LaFlamme, 16) Dan Cote, 17) Tom Dean, 18) Rick Spencer, 19) Jeff Kelmel, 20) Jon Routhier, 21) Nick Hilt, 22) Jay Corbin,23) Don Collins 24) Jeremy Cole 25) Hugh Page,

Pure Stock #1 Results (10 Laps) – 1) Casey, Jay* 2) Morris, Scott 3) Perez,Larry 4) Cash, Johnny 5) Arnold, Mike 6) Smith, Rich 7) Cole, Kyle 8) Miller, Jordan 9) Meltz, Tim 10) Denue, John 11) Burdick, Wuggie 12)Booth, Clifford*

Pure Stock #2 Results (10 Laps) – 1) Murphy, Tom* 2) Olds, Doug 3) Stickles, Dave 4) Thompson, Tim 5) Kreutzinger, Jeff 6) Reilly, Nick 7) Vandenburg, Kerri 8) Rogers, Rich 9) Murphy, Chris 10) Schneider, Adam 11) Vandenburg, Brian

Pure Stock #3 Results (10 Laps) – 1) Relyea, Al* 2) Hatch, Ed 3) Denue, Dom 4) Deak, Bill Jr.* 5) O’Brien, Gary* 6) Seyerlein, Zach 7) Hall, Ray Sr * 8) Devine, John* 9) Meltz, Jeff Jr.* 10) Meltz, Jeff 11) Sorrentino, Zach 12) Streeter, Chris 13) Perez, Shawn* 14) Murphy, Jesse 15) Ganczar, Lou