Defending Champ Brett Hearn Starts 2018 At Lebanon Valley Right Where He Ended 2017…On Top

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – Brett Hearn hasn’t lost a Big Block Modified championship at the Lebanon Valley Speedway since 2011. On Saturday night, the 12-time title holder started his march towards #13 with a statement-making victory on the high banks.

Utilizing a heads-up start in the feature format rather than traditional handicapping, Hearn used a rare up-front starting spot (4th) to get to second in quick fashion and challenged leader Andy Bachetti for several laps before making the move to take the lead on a lap 11 restart.

From there, ‘the Jet’ went on to score the popular win and assert his stranglehold on the Valley field.

“It’s always nice to get the first win of the season out of the way early and now we concentrate on getting our program stronger,” Hearn said. “Any time Andy’s on the point he’s tough to get by. It’s pretty much a given that he’s going to try and get out front and run. All I could do was try and wear him down.”

He did just that, and was able to use the lap 11 double-file restart to his advantage.

“I timed that last restart really well and he got into turn one a little bit too hard,” Hearn said. “He pushed across the track and I hooked the bottom. The timing was good and I just got in front of him and the next thing I knew the 115 (Kenny Tremont) was in second and I was surprised by that.”

When Tremont got to the runner-up spot, he pressed the Madsen Motorsports machine but was never able to get by.

“I was pretty confident I could outrun Kenny and we did,” Hearn said. “This is the same car we’ve run here the last two years and it’s a great piece. It will be dedicated to this place only. We won’t change much until we get beat.”

Tremont’s run to second came from a ninth-place starting position. For the 13-time high point man, where he started the race was his downfall.

“It would have been nicer to start on the front couple of rows like those other guys,” he said. “I think that would have helped us out tremendously but we still need to be better no matter what. We should be good enough to have a car that can start on the last row and win.”

Even with the good run, Tremont knows he and his team have to put their noses down to get their Troyer machine better.

“We’ve got some work to do,” he said. “We’re really happy with the way the car went tonight but we know we need to be better. We’re going to have a good year but we’ve got to get a little bit quicker.”

For Bachetti, a third place is a good finish in the season opener, but he knows that when you have a pole starting spot, you need to make the best out of the situation.

“We had a pretty good race car tonight,” Bachetti said. “Brett was a little better than us and Kenny was too. Brett got me on the restart. What are you going to do?”

Even though it wasn’t a win, the Sheffield, MA driver is pretty excited with the prospects of what’s to come this season.

“This is a new race car and I’m pretty happy with it,” he said. “We’re a little better this year than we were in 2017 car-wise and we’ll come back and see what we can do next week.”

Eddie Marshall brought his #98 home in the fourth spot with JR Heffner taking a solid fifth place in the ACS Express #74. Ronnie Johnson, who last raced full-time at Lebanon Valley in 2001, made his official return to the high banks and brought the Mickle Automotive #2RJ home in sixth.

News & Notes…

Keith Flach’s plans to start 2018 off strong took a tough turn when the engine in his #43 Bicknell machine quit just passed the one-third mark of the event.

“The motor just went down on power,” Flach said. “It acted like it dropped a cylinder. We’re not sure what exactly happened and won’t know until we get it down to Billy the Kid’s shop on Monday. He thinks we may have a valve that is cracked.”

Even with engine problems, Flach found a silver lining.

“The good news is that nothing detonated in the motor,” he said. “Luckily, Billy just finished one of our engines we had down there for him to freshen so we’ll put that engine in for our next race at the Valley.”

Flach and his Andrew Phillips-led team fought handling issues all night and thought they were going in the right direction before the engine troubles.

“We fought a tight into the center of the corner condition all night long, but had it better for the feature,” he said. “We still could have started a little freer with how slick the track was. We made good progress for only running a handful of laps and will shrug it off and try to come back stronger in two weeks.”

Flach will miss next week’s race at the Valley as he will be running the Highbank Holdup at Fulton…the opener for the Super DIRTcar Series.

LJ Lombardo had high hopes going into the start of the 2018 season. His team had a brand new Billy the Kid powerplant in their #35 Teo Pro Car, and after a very promising test session last weekend, the team was hoping for great results on Saturday night.

However, it wasn’t to be. After qualifying through his heat race, the team found a broken valve in the new engine, effectively ending their night.

“We broke a valve in the heat and were done,” he said. “There was no warning at all. We may need a new head, new valves and pistons. Billy said he has all the parts in stock will put us first on the list Monday morning to get it fixed. He said we’ll be ready to go with this engine for next week.”

After what he felt was the answer to his fuel pressure problems in this shop this week, Paul Gilardi still fought the same issues during opening night. He failed to qualify through his heat race and started the feature in the 21st position.

The driver from Pittsfield, MA took his #87x HigFab chassis forward in the feature event, bringing the car home with a solid 10th place finish.

“My guys worked their tails off after the heat trying to figure out the issue, and I thought we had until about the last ten laps of the feature,” Gilardi said. “We’re not really sure what it is, though. It’s a fuel pressure problem or it’s running out of fuel halfway down the straightaways. We’ll tackle it in the shop and try and get things straightened out for next week, but to finish top ten tonight, I’m very happy.”

Wayne Jelley is running a special paint scheme to start this season. In honor of his brother, the legendary Butch Jelley, Wayne is running a yellow “X” color scheme to replicate the car that Butch ran for the Riiska Racing team many years ago.

Jelley brought the “X” home in the 11th spot on Saturday.

The Marcus name has been around the Valley for a while. George Marcus is one of the all-time winningest open wheel Small Block drivers in this history of the speedway, and Saturday night, his nephew, Josh, took his first laps around the speedway in Kyle Sheldon’s back-up #42.

Josh has been running Slingshots for the past several seasons and was just getting his feet wet running the Alex Thomson-owned machine. It was cool to see the Marcus family represented once again at the speedway.

Denny Soltis, the most recent winner before Hearn on the high banks, didn’t have the night he was hoping for. Still fighting health issues, Soltis brought his older Teo Pro Car instead of the Bicknell machine he won with last season.

The car was popping like crazy during opening night hot laps and Soltis called the night early.