MARTINSVILLE, Va. — The North wins again.
Jericho, N.Y. driver Donnie Lia out-dueled Ted Christopher to take Saturday night’s NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour-Southern Modified Tour combined Made In American Whelen 300 at Martinsville Speedway.
“This is the biggest win of my career so far,” said Lia, who edged Christopher by .487-second after battling him for the vast majority of the 300 laps on the half-mile oval. “It means a lot for me to win here.”
Lia, who earned a $12,375 winner’s share, got the jump on Plainville, Conn.’s Christopher on a lap-278 restart and led the final 22 laps under green for his sixth series victory of the season.
But those laps were driven with Christopher filling up Lia’s rearview mirror as third-place finisher L.W. Miller, a Mooresville, N.C.-based driver and the top finisher from the Southern Tour, falling farther behind and crossing the line nearly six seconds behind Christopher.
James Civali (Meriden, Conn.) and Timothy Brown (Cana, Va.) rounded out the top five, giving the North three of the top five finishers.
Christopher reached Lia’s bumper as the two weaved their way through lapped traffic in the latter stages of the race, but Lia, who started on the pole, was not rattled.
After all, he’d seen it before.
“It doesn’t matter who he’s racing — he’s going to race whoever it is hard and race to win,” Lia said of Christopher. “It’s the same with me — and I look out the front windshield. He could do whatever he wanted back there, but he had his work cut out for him if he was going to go around me — I’ll tell you that much.”
The race, which took just more than three hours to complete, was plagued by attrition — the result of 15 caution periods for a total of 88 laps.
That number also included a pair of red flags that stopped the race for about 30 minutes combined. By race’s end, 15 of the cars that made up the 43-car field were already in the garage.
Christopher led at the mid-point and was ahead of Lia, outside polesitter Todd Szegedy and Robert Santos, collecting $1,500 for the mid-point lead.
But Christopher said his No. 86 Chevrolet developed an engine skip during the second half of the race — after he had battled back from 15th following a pit stop — to put himself in second place and in position to battle Lia for the checkers.
“The skip bothered me more than the lapped traffic,” said Christopher, who also slid up on the track after driving too hard into turn one and had to fight his way back to Lia’s rear.
“I was just driving hard — you want to win, you drive hard.”
Lia and Christopher were the only two drivers to lead the race, except for a two-lap stretch that saw Ronnie Silk take the point. Lia led 234 laps.
Christopher wasn’t the only one driving hard. Among the 15 caution flags was a 16-car pileup at the exit of turn one and a scary crash involving Glenn Tyler’s No. 8 Chevrolet. He collided with Zach Brewer and skidded along the top of the safer-barrier wall as sparks flew in the exit of turn four.
Miller said he avoided so many “close calls” that he lost count.
Considering that and the way Lia and Christopher pulled away from the field at every opportunity late in the race, Miller said he was happy to bring home a third-place finish.
“We had a good-driving car, but just not a real fast car,” said Miller.
The finish:
Donnie Lia, Ted Christopher, L.W. Miller, James Civali, Tim Brown, Brian King, Richard Houlihan, Rowan Pennink, Jay Foley, Richard Savary, George Brunnhoelzl, Jason Myers, Brandon Hire, Robert Grigas, Junior Miller, Joseph Hartmann, Jerry Marquis, Eric Beers, Jamie Tomaino, Ronnie Silk, Buddy Emory, Burt Myers, Billy Pauch, Eddie Flemke, Todd Szegedy, Matt Hirschmann, Doug Coby, Ryan Preece, Brian Pack, Frank Fleming, Reggie Ruggerio, Bobby Santos, Danny Sammons, Mike Stefanik, Woody Pitkat, Kevin Goodale, Anthony Sesely, Wade Cole, Zach Brewer, Glenn Tyler, Jake Marosz, Jimmy Blewett.