RPW Exclusive: Sunday Night At Lebanon Valley Was Almost A Magical Night For Brock Zearfoss

Column By: DYLAN FRIEBEL / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – When the All Star Circuit of Champions rolled into the Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, NY on Sunday night, Series front runners Carson Macedo, Aaron Reutzel, and Chad Kemenah were all favorites to take the win. However, the Pennsylvania Posse dominated and took the top two spots in the A Main.

One of those drivers was Brock Zearfoss. Zearfoss was fast right off the truck, timing 10th quick and started third in his heat.

“This is first time I’ve ever seen this track,” Zearfoss said. “I kinda like the place. We were really good for hot laps and that shows how good my guys are to give me a fast car for having never seen the place.”

The “Jonestown Jet” wasted no time and set his sights on the pole dash for the night’s event. He did just that by finishing second in his heat behind Anthony Fiore. He redrew eighth out of eight for the dash, only managing to get by one car by the finish. That is where he lined up in the 25-lap A-Main.

Aaron Reutzel and Paul McMahan paced to field to green. With a few early cautions, it seemed as if the yellow silk was going to plague the event.

Just after a lap three restart, the two leaders got together in turn two. Reutzel was able to return to the race while McMahan was not.

That put Gerard McIntrye and Sammy Swindell in positions one and two with Zearfoss now I’m third, setting his sights on the veteran they call “Slammin’ Sammy.”

A caution with just four laps remaining bunched the field back up and Brock wasted no time, motoring around the outside of Swindell in turns one and two. He powered down the backstretch with just a handful to go.

Coming to the white flag, it looked as if the 4 of Zearfoss was faster than the leader. However, while making a run to pull a slider going into turn three, the caution was thrown and then an open red to refuel ensued. This effectively ended Zearfoss’ charge.

A Green-White-Checkered came next, but the 07 of McIntrye played the restart perfectly and took home win. Zearfoss was a close second, completing the 1-2 finish for the PA Posse in New York.

“We unloaded quick and stayed quick.” Zearfoss said. “It’s a testament to these guys on the crew. This is only our fifth race together and to make the [Knoxville] Nationals the first year and then come here and finish top 5 is awesome.”

Even though he finished second, Zearfoss admits he would love a couple more breaks to see if he fluke have made it to victory lane.

“We had grip the whole night,” he said. “Unfortunately, we were stuck with a bad dash draw. It was tough to pass out there. We had some timely cautions there and caught some breaks. I just wish we had that last restart back though. I would have done it completely different and think we would have come away with the win. McIntyre played it smart, so we’ll take a second place. It slicked off a little bit and got all the way up to wall, which made it so you could move around a little bit. We had the chance to move around to find some speed.”

When the Posse comes to town, it raises eyebrows and even Zearfoss knows that and it was proven Sunday at the ‘Valley Of Speed.’

“We race hard down in PA,” he said. “We race every lap and we take one off. There’s some of the very best down in PA.”

Zearfoss knows, though, that the traveling tours have some of the best too.

“Anytime you get to travel and race hard with these guys its fun as well,” he said. Sammy (Swindell) has been around forever and will race you clean. It’s a big testament to racing at home all the time. We have the best of the best, and when you have to race those guys hard every night, you do that everywhere else.”

On Sunday Night at Lebanon Valley, Brock Zearfoss proved that he and his Destiny Motorsports team are a potent combination and showed everyone why PA Posse drivers are the real deal at the same time.