RPW Exclusive: Simply A Dominating Performance By Kenny Tremont At Lebanon Valley

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – Simply…Wow!

That is all you can say for the dominant performance Kenny Tremont put together Saturday night at the Lebanon Valley Speedway.

Tremont started in 12th and was the leader as the fifth circuit clicked off the scoreboard, passing brother-in-law Brian Berger. Though different drivers had trouble, including pole sitter and early leader Matt Pupello and then another early leader Mike King, Tremont was simply on a mission.

“Man, what a pleasure to drive something like that,” Tremont said. “You can’t drive a car like that too hard. It just stuck like glue and when you can drive like that it’s always a lot of fun.”

When the race was over, Ken had almost a half a track lead on Berger, and that was all with no more cautions. Simply put, the 115 was on a rail.

“With something like this, you just fee like Superman,” he said. “This thing just stuck really good wherever I put it. You just live for races and moments like this.”

At the checkers it was Tremont taking his third win of 2019 and with that, claiming the Big Block point lead as Andy Bachetti had early race troubles and was a DNF on the night. Brian Berger finished second and thought it was in awe of how good his brother-in-law was.

“Kenny was bad fast,” Berger said. “That shouldn’t be allowed how fast he was. When he went by me, he just left me. We were a second place car tonight, and we’re happy with that.”

Berger started sixth and was the leader after Mike King broke a right rear radius rod mount while holding the top spot. It was a great boost for Berger and his team who have had a tough go of things this season.

“I just hit my marks and went as fast as I could,” he said. “I have to thank my guys for sticking with me through a slow start to our season. We weren’t good enough to win tonight but we’re very happy with a second.”

JR Heffner, Kolby Schroder and Eddie Marshall completed the top five. As stated, Andy Bachetti was the point leader heading into the night, but contact between he and and LJ Lombardo on the first lap sent the #4 into the turn one wall hard, bending several parts and sheering the right front wheel clear off the axle.

Both drivers weren’t happy with the situation, but Lombardo was able to rebound for a ninth place finish while Bachetti came home 19th. While he didn’t have the night he wanted in his Big Block, the “Wild Child” did have another amazing night in the 358’s, grabbing the top spot at the halfway point and never looking back to score his sixth win of 2019.

Bachetti, who wrecked his race car in a heat race crash one week ago, proved his team has what it takes to come back from troubles to made it look easy on Saturday.

“It was a long week for us,” Bachetti said. “Everybody worked their guts out this week to put this car together and I think this one is better than the last one. I can’t say enough about this team.”

The 358-Modified race was another one that looked just so easy for the guy sitting in victory lane. Bachetti started 13th and just worked his way to the front, and as stated, took the lead in 12 laps…a dominant performance, taking the lead from Chris Curtis on the high side in a thrilling move.

“You just gotta go when you get the chance,” he said. “You can’t think twice. Everybody’s good and has the same equipment here. When you get the opportunity you go after it.”

Curtis brought his #35 home second with Steve Hough, Timothy Davis and last week’s winner, Brett Haas, completing the top five.

With Orange County Fair Speedway raining out, former Valley regular Michael Sabia made the trek north to the high banks to race, and it proved to be a good choice. Sabia took the lead from Ryan MaCartney with seven laps remaining and went on to take the checkered flag.

It looked like current point leader Rob Maxon had the fastest car on the track and was destined to be in victory lane. However, as he was going to the inside of McCartney for the lead entering turn one, the leader pinched the hole closed and the 96 of Maxon went spinning. He went to the rear of the field and rebounded nicely, coming across the line seventh at the finish.

However, the night belonged to Sabia who started in the 18th position in the main event.

“Man it feels good to be home,” Sabia said. “I love racing here. We made a commitment at the beginning of the year to race Orange County and we have to stick with that, but this track is awesome. I love it here.”

With having to come from deep, what was Sabia’s plan for the night?

“Starting so far back, we were hoping for a top five tonight,” he said. “Then we started picking them off one at a time there and I saw Jeff (Watson) get tangled in up in a wreck and knew he was a threat. Then Maxon had his problems and I knew we had a shot. There’s a lot of good cars here but it feels good to be on top and show them we can still do it.”

Sabia will be back at the Valley next weekend as Orange County is off for the 4th of July.

“If the Sportsman are running, we’ll be here to try for back-to-back,” he said. “If not, we’ll bring our Small Block car.”

MaCartney crossed the line second in what appeared to be the best finish of his career, but was disqualified in post-race tech inspection for having an aluminum harmonic balancer on his crate engine. That moved Peter Carlotto to second with John Virgilio third. Pat Jones and Robby Knipe completed the top five.

Probably the most exciting person to win on Saturday night was the guy who collected his first career victory in the Pro Stock division…that being Tommy Dean.

Dean started on the pole and had to fend off the likes of Nick Arnold, Rick Duzlak and Richie Crane to taste victory for the first time, but did exactly what he had to do.

“This is just crazy man,” Dean said after realizing he’s now a winner at Lebanon Valley. “We’ve been digging for four years to get this and I have to thank my Mom, my stepdad, and my entire team for getting us here.”

Dean ran a flawless race all night and was pulling away from second place Crane when the checkered flags fell.

“This is just great tonight,” he said. “I really don’t know how to put it into words what this means to us.”

Crane came home second with Seven Larochelle third, Connecticut’s Jay Casey in fourth and Rob Yetman fifth.

It appeared as if Dean was going to have some pressure in the form of second place running Nick Arnold and third place Rick Duzlak, but contact between the second and third place cars with six laps remaining ended that threat.

Arnold’s car spun and hit the wall, ending his night while Duzlak was sent to the rear for his involvement in the altercation. He made a handful of laps after that before calling it a night and going pitside.

Chris Murphy and Jeff Meltz Sr. took home the Pure Stock event wins with Jeff Kreutzinger taking home the hard-fought Meltz Lumber 20-lap Pure Stock feature event.

Saturday June 29, 2019 – West Lebanon, NY – Berkshire Bank Presents – Modified Results (30 Laps) -1) Kenny Tremont Jr, 2) Brian Berger, 3) J.R. Heffner, 4) Kolby Schroder, 5) Eddie Marshall, 6) Kyle Armstrong, 7) Peter Britten, 8) Keith Flach, 9) L.J Lombardo, 10) Marc Johnson, 11) Kyle Sheldon, 12) Paul Gilardi, 13) Ronnie Johnson, 14) Mike King, 15) Denny Soltis, 16) Ricky Davis, 17) Matt Pupello, 18) John Ruchel, 19) Andy Bachetti, 20) Olden Dwyer, 21) Steve Hough, 22) Chad Jeseo,

Small Block Modified Results (24 Laps) -1) Andy Bachetti, 2) Chris Curtis, 3) Steve Hough, 4) Timothy Davis, 5) Brett Haas, 6) J.R. Heffner, 7) Frank Harper, 8) Jason Herrington, 9) Ray Hall Jr, 10) Brandon Pitcher, 11) Guy Sheldon, 12) Ricky Davis, 13) Brian Sandstedt, 14) Brandon Lane, 15) Ryan Charland, 16) Sean Mandel, 17) Joe Bonetti, 18) Alan Houghtaling, 19) Frank Hoard III, 20) Olden Dwyer, 21) Kim LaVoy, 22) Dillon Steuer,

Sportsman Results (20 Laps) -1) Micheal Sabia, 2) Pete Carlotto, 3) John Virgilio, 4) Pat Jones, 5) Robbie Knipe, 6) Chris Lynch, 7) Rob Maxon, 8) Kevin Arnold, 9) Ted Teal, 10) Jeff Higham, 11) John St. Germain, 12) Joe Bonetti, 13) Nikki Ouellette, 14) Shane Henion, 15) Joseph Coppola, 16) Whitey Slavin, 17) Karl Barnes, 18) John Stowell, 19) Robbie Colburn, 20) Juim Cronk, 21) Gary O’Brien, 22) John Santolin, 23) Scott Zehnacker, 24) Mike Bradley, 25) Andy Lindman, 26) Justin Gozzi, 27) Aaron Mulready, 28) Jeff Watson, 29) Cody Ochs, DQ) Ryan MaCartney

Pro Stock Results (20 Laps) – Not Available At Press Time

Pure Stock #1 Results (8 Laps) -1) Chris Murphy, 2) Clifford Booth, 3) Matt Bush, 4) Ray Tarantino, 5) Jim Dellea, 6) Rocco Procopio, 7) Ryan Brown, 8) Fred Hoffman, 9) Craig Coons, 10) Evan Denue, 11) Janai St. Pierre, 12) Dave Stickles,

Pure Stock #2 Results (8 Laps) -1) Jeff Meltz SR., 2) Jeff Kreutzinger, 3) Jesse Murphy, 4) Ed Hatch, 5) Zach Seyerlein, 6) Ray Hall Sr., 7) Rob Partridge, 8) Brian Walsh, 9) Don Kennedy, 10) Keri Vandenburg,

Meltz Lumber Pure Stock Feature (20 Laps) -1) Kreutzinger, Jeff*** 2) Murphy, Jesse* 3) Hatch, Ed*** 4) Seyerlein, Zach** 5) Meltz, Jeff SR.* 6) Dellea, Jim, 7) Hoffman, Fred 8) Bush, Matt 9) Denue, Evan 10) Procopio,Rocco 11) Partridge, Rob** 12) Murphy, Chris** 13) Brown, Ryan 14) Walsh, Brian 15) Tarantino, Ray