RPW Column: Not Even Close To Sinking In: Ryan Darcy Nabs First Career Mod Win At Lebanon Valley In Prestigious JC Flach Memorial

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – WEST LEBANON, NY – Fellow racer Frank Harper handed him a nice, cold beverage.  His father, Mike, had a smile from ear-to-ear.  The emotions still visible within his own eyes.

It was that moment, after pulling his #21 from DIRTcar Big Block Modified victory lane at Lebanon Valley Speedway that rookie Ryan Darcy sat back in his racecar and tried to comprehend what he’d just accomplished.

Had it sunk in that he’d just visited the winner’s circle for his first career Modified win in one of the biggest regular season events on the Valley’s calendar…the JC Flach Memorial?

“Not even close,” Darcy said cracking the drink.  “I honestly can’t even believe it.  We’ve been away from this place for a really long time but we decided to do this Big Block thing here this year and this is just amazing.”

In his wildest dreams, returning to the High Banks after a few years off to tend to his family’s new, but growing, business, did Darcy ever feel that a win was in the cards?  Better yet, did he think he’d get one so soon in his Big Block career?

“I knew we were capable of getting here,” he said.  “We were fast in the Small Blocks for a lot of years, but like I said, after taking some time off, I didn’t expect to make it here to victory lane this soon.”

Darcy may have started from the optimum position, right up on the pole, but this was in no ways a gimmie.  He had to fend off the challenges, and quite a few of them, from veteran Wayne Jelley, who pressured the New Lebanon, NY driver for nearly the entire 30-lap main event.

In fact, on a lap 13 restart, heading into turn three, Jelley did get his #45 passed Darcy with a slide job.  However, Darcy was able to crack the throttle, turn right back under Jelly and regain the lead.

“That was brutal,” he said.  “I give Wayne credit.  If I was in that position, I would have done the same thing.  He really ran me in deep, slid up across the nose of my car, but thankfully I was able to turn back under him.”

From that point on, Jelley stayed glued to the #21 of Darcy, hoping for a mistake from the youngster.  The mistake never came.

“My guys told me he was right there on my bumper the last half of the race,” he said.  “Hats off to Wayne.  Thanks for a clean race and the Flach family for putting this race on in JC’s memory.  Just really don’t have any words to say right now.”

With the victory, Ryan and his team took home $5,600 for their efforts.  The event paid $5,000-to-win and he was able to capture the JC Flach first-time winner bonus of $500 as well.  To top that off, Darcy picked up an addition $100 for winning his heat race.

This was extra special because the powerplant under the hood of Darcy’s car is one of the new engines that was developed at the Valley over the past few seasons.  While the team originally had questioned if it was the correct move for them this year, Saturday night put all doubts of that away.

“Dan Bedell (the engine’s builder) told us, when we picked this motor up that it was capable of winning,” he said.  “He really wasn’t kidding.  This piece was killer on restarts and killer on straightaway speed and we finally got this car dialed in.  Thanks to Joe Matthews at JAM Performance for that.  He gave us some ideas to try for the feature and man, this thing was hooked up.”

Ryan knows he wouldn’t have made it to victory lane without the help of some special people, and he was quick to mention that.

“Thank you to my father and Davey Shuhart for their hard work all night,” he said.  “Kenny Sandstedt has supported this team since I started here at 14 years old.  David and Carl Schilling…I can always call David to pick his brain for ideas.  I just really can’t thank my dad, my sister, my mother and everyone that’s worked so hard to get us here.”

Jelley came home with a solid second place finish with point leader Andy Bachetti making a late race charge through the field to finish in third.

Brett Haas was quick early in the main event and looked like he could get into the mix for the feature win until the handling went away on his #55.  Multiple cautions sealed over his right rear tire and he backslid to fourth at the finish and last week’s victor, Marc Johnson, came home with another solid finish in fifth.

If there was someone who could use a big shot of good fortune at Lebanon Valley on Saturday night, it was probably 358-Modified feature event winner Olden Dwyer.

After a tough start to the season, both at the Valley and his first foray as a regular on the Super DIRTcar Series, Dwyer was able to park his #88 Small Block in victory lane for a well-deserved, and much needed, win.

“We’ve really been struggling this year,” Dwyer said.  “On the road, here, everything so this is just a huge, huge morale boost for myself and this amazing team.”

With five laps remaining, the caution flew and erased the half-straightaway lead that Dwyer had built up over the second place car, which only a handful of laps before became the #4 of Andy Bachetti.  With two wins already on the season, Dwyer knew he would have to work hard to hold off his good friend.

“That caution was the last thing I needed,” he said.  “Especially when I saw Andy come up next to me for the restart.  I said, man, but I knew we had a really fast piece.  These guys have just done a super job with this car and tonight, it showed.”

Did he feel like he could hold off Bachetti?

“I had to keep reminding myself, just stay with what got you here,” he said.  “Running around the top was pretty much it and I felt that as long as I kept this thing under me, we’d be okay.”

Last week, things began to turn around for Dwyer and his team with a top five in the Small Block feature.  With the win on Saturday, things look to be heading in the right direction for the Vermont driver and his crew.

“We struggled early on with this coil rear suspension deal,” he said.  “It’s something real different for us but we’re starting to figure it out a little bit and this is a good sign for things to come.”

Bachetti had to settle for second with Jason Herrington, rebounding from a dismal start to his night and a DNF in his heat race, to finish third.  Joey Coppola backed up his solid top five last week with another one on Saturday.  He came home fourth and Ryan Larkin completed the top five.

Probably the best race of the night was the always-entertaining Pro Stock division.  At one point late in their 20-lap feature, six cars were under a blanket fighting for the lead.

However, in the end, it was Jason Meltz, taking the lead away from Tommy Dean with just a handful of laps left and never looking back to score his first victory of the ’21 season.

“These past few weeks, we’ve been wicked fast both here and at Albany-Saratoga,” Meltz said.  “We got a couple seconds up there in a row and been second here the last two weeks, but we’ve been fine-tuning and dialing this car in and finally got it done.”

Meltz’s win was one of the toughest to get this season as several top drivers were in the mix for the win.  The likes of Dean, Steven Larochelle, Scott Towslee and point leader Chad Jeseo were all challenging the Meltz machine for the checkers.

In fact, a mid-race multi-car incident severely damaged Jeseo’s ride and sent him to the rear of the field.  However, he worked his way back to the front but just couldn’t get the Ghent, NY driver for the win.

“The cars that are in this class are some of the toughest around,” he said.  “Chad, Scottie, Steven, Johnny Rivers, everyone that runs here are super fast so it’s not like it’s a walk in a park to get to victory lane.  Whoever wins has to earn it.”

Jeseo came home second with Larochelle coming home third.  It looked like Tommy Dean was on his way to his first win of the season but fell back to fourth when he lost the lead.  That’s where he would finish with Johnny Rivers bringing his #14J home with another solid finish in fifth.

Not to be outdone by his son, Jeff Meltz Sr. captured his third Pure Stock victory of the season on Saturday.  He was joined by Rocco Procopio and Chris Stalker as winners in Pure Stocks on the night.

Now, add in another Meltz, Tim Meltz, who took home checkers in the 4-Cylinder Single Cam and RPW’s very own racing photographer, Lucas Ballard, who took the win in the Dual Cam division, and you had an exciting night of racing on the high banks.

MODIFIED FEATURE RESULTS ( 30 LAPS) # 1) Ryan Darcy* 21 2) Wayne Jelley, 45X 3) Andy Bachetti** 4 4) Brett Haas, 55H 5) Marc Johnson* 3J 6) Kolby Schroder, 99 7) Brian Berger, 60 8) Bobby Hackel IV 97 9) Kenny Tremont Jr, 115 10) Eddie Marshall, 98 11) Kyle Sheldon, 42S 12) Keith Flach 43 13) Ricky Davis 59 14) J.R. Heffner, 74 15) Olden Dwyer, 88JR 16) Mike King, 55K 17) Jackie Brown JR. 91NY 18) Timothy Davis 7T 19) Dan Humes 0 20) Josh Marcus, 91M 21) Kyle Armstrong, 11A 22) L.J Lombardo* 35 23) Jeff Sukup, 35S 24) Chase Dowling 9 25) Rob Pitcher, 17P 26) Kenny Aanonson, 42A

SMALL BLOCK MODIFIEDS FEATURE RESULTS (24 LAPS) # 1) Olden Dwyer* 88JR 2) Andy Bachetti** 4 3) Jason Herrington, 1 4) Joey Coppola 94 5) Ryan Larkin 39 6) Brian Petrerson 82 7) Ryan Charland, 10C 8) Brandon Lane, 33 9) Frank Harper, 25 10) Ray Hall Jr, 72 11) Montgomery Tremont 115 12) Chris Curtis 35C 13) Mike Sabia 7S 14) Kevin Petrucci 24 15) Alan Houghtaling, 250 16) Kim Lavoy 3 17) John Lutes JR. 21L

PRO STOCKS FEATURE RESULTS (20 LAPS) # 1) Jason Meltz* 51 2) Chad Jeseo,** 25 3) Steven LaRochelle, 178 4) Tom Dean, 413 5) Johnny Rivers, 14J 6) Nick Hilt* 17 7) Zach Seyerlein, 33 8) Jay Fitgerald* 56 9) Scott Towslee, 23 10) Shawn Perez, O9 11) Tom O’Connor 52 12) Dave Stickles, 55 13) Frank Twing 1 14) Rick Spencer 32

PURE STOCK # 1 FEATURE RESULTS (8 LAPS) # 1) Jeff Meltz SR.*** 5X 2) Brian Walsh* 43 3) Don Kennedy, 89K 4) Keri Vandenburg, 89 5) Ryan Brown* O10 6) Chris Murphy, O11 7) Franklin Smith, 76 8) Wayne Mahar O 9) Shawn Perez, O9

PURE STOCK # 2 FEATURE RESULTS (8 LAPS) # 1) Rocco Procopio** 62 2) Jim Dellea, 77 3) Scott Morris, 84 4) Janai St. Pierre* 18 5) Rob Partridge** 22 6) Dylan Fachini 35 7) Colby Kokosa OOK 8) Katarina Foster 10 9) Chris Brown, OO9 10) Nick Hilt III 17H

PURE STOCK # 3 FEATURE RESULTS (8 LAPS) # 1) Chris Stalker*** 177 2) Clifford Booth, 17 3) Dave Striebel JR. 73 4) Scott Kilmer, OO7 5) John Devine** 24 6) Craig Coons, 133C 7) Jethro Rossman, 48 8) Ray Royals 6 9) Peter Huntoon, 3 10) Dave Fachini 122

4 CYLINDER DUAL CAM FEATURE RESULTS (15 LAPS) # 1) Lucas Ballard* 54D 2) Brandon Ely** 5D 3) Garrett Biagiarelli, 343D 4) Doug Howe 12D 5) Steve Burbank, 22D 6) Robert Miner 710D 7) Helina Yeno 313D 8) David Frame 9D 9) Mike Duncan, 6D 10) Jim Williams 15D 11) Jim Guertin, 7D 12) John Wright, 74D

4 CYLINDER SINGLE CAM FEATURE RESULTS (15 LAPS) # 1) Tim Meltz** 515S 2) Victor Duncan JR.* 73S 3) Bradley Batho, O7s 4) Joey Batho, 7S 5) Chris Bierce, 62S 6) Matt Narzynski, 93S 7) Jacob Mcdonald OOS 8) Gary Malloy SR., 69S 9) Jon Shepard 60S 10) Nick McCelendon 82S Joe Wolfe 777S