It Was A Dominating Performance By Jimmy Phelps & HBR Sunday Night At Utica-Rome

Column By: JOHN DOUGLAS / RPW – VERNON, NY – The very best the Northeast has to offer in dirt modified racing converged on Utica-Rome Speedway Sunday night for the sixth round of the 2018 Super DIRTcar Series tour. Jimmy Phelps hadn’t won a series race since 2016 but that streak was shattered with a flag-to-flag victory over Thursday night’s winner on the tour, Danny Johnson.

Phelps led the field to green and quickly jumped into the top position in turn one. For the first six circuits Pat Ward’s 42 and D. Johnson battled for second place. However, caution flew over the speedway just seven laps in for the wounded car of Andrew Ferguson.

A lap 17 restart following another on track incident saw Stewart Friesen begin his charge toward the front and for a moment it looked like the Utica-Rome Speedway of year’s past as he put the right rear on the extreme top side looking to keep momentum up around the top side of the speedway.

Keep momentum Friesen did as he worked his way to fourth place.

That wasn’t good enough for the Sprakers, N.Y. driver as he immediately began an assault on the podium positions. Again to the outside Friesen made his way past not one but two cars including D. Johnson’s slotting himself into second place.

Friesen finally caught the 98H of Phelps on the 24th circuit and one of the most intense battles for the lead of the season to date began. For the next 40 laps Phelps was challenged for the lead at every turn by Friesen’s No. 44. Rolling the bottom, Phelps managed to hold Friesen off lap after lap as he stayed faithful to the extreme bottom groove. Running just inches from the yuke tires, Phelps played to the strengths of his car and stayed focused on the task at hand.

“You’ve just got to keep doing what you’re doing and keep hitting your marks.” Phelps said, “Obviously it’s a distraction… We just needed to keep doing what we were doing and it was enough.”

It paid off for Phelps, as he withstood the attack and Friesen began to fade. First up to take advantage was Danny Johnson, who passed Friesen for second. Then slowly but surely, Friesen fell from the top five altogether having burned up the right rear tire. This gave Erik Rudolph the opportunity to move into third position and attempt to run down the leaders. Phelps and Johnson were too far ahead but Rudolph managed a solid third place finish.

“The restarts at the end bunched the cars up and we were able to get a few spots.” Rudolph said, “First and second were a little better than us tonight but we might’ve used the car up coming through. Regardless, we didn’t have a stellar time trial or heat but we were able to turn it around a little bit for the feature.”

Danny Johnson made his own attack on Phelps in the late going and even with a couple restarts it was clear that Phelps had the winning combination.

“There’s always something you could change in the car.” D. Johnson said, “The problem with these cars is there’s always too much to change. We made some good choices, maybe could’ve made some better ones but we’re good.”

Pulling away on his trusty bottom groove, Phelps went uncontested in the final stages of the race to pick up his first win on the Super DIRTcar Series in nearly two seasons.

“I got concerned there at the end.” Phelps said as we discussed the final stages of the event. “Sometimes the bottom slows and the middle cleans up. I stuck to the bottom and just prayed that no one would roll around me.”

“You’re always concerned when you’ve guys of that caliber behind you. I knew Stewart started ninth I think and he’s been really fast all night so when he got there it kinda, you know, makes you get up on the wheel a little bit. Then “The Doc” (D. Johnson) came back and obviously he’s on a bit of a hot streak right now and his car is really good. We just had to keep doing what we were doing and hope it was enough.”

Enough it was, as Phelps picked up valuable points and a $6,000 pay day.

The Super DIRTcar Series heads next, to Dundee, N.Y. and the Outlaw Speedway on Tuesday, July 10th.