6/9/2014
Airborne Park Speedway
Bruno there at the end to win Sportsman 100
SOUTH PLATTSBURGH – The chance to win the Dig Safely NY/Aaron’s Sportsman Modified 100 fell into Travis Bruno’s lap Saturday night at Airborne Park Speedway and he was ready and capable to make the most of it.
Bruno was holding down fourth place, a quarter of a track behind a three-way battle up front between leader Jason Durgan, Nick Heywood and Mark Lamberton when the race came apart in turns one and two on lap 84.
Backmarker Jeff Clodgo, with a tire going down, tried to head for the top-of-turn-two pit road entrance causing another lapped car Ty Drown to slam on the brakes and wind up in Durgan’s path as he worked the traffic. Durgan got clipped, lost a right rear wheel and collected Heywood and Codie Aubin.
Lamberton escaped the contact, but had to pit under caution to replace a deflating tire of his own. As the only other car still on the lead lap, he lined up third on the restart behind Bruno in the B&B Trucking/Adirondack Water No.69 and runner-up Jamie LaFountain.
LaFountain put up a fight and led by a wheel on lap 91, but Bruno regained the lead and drew out to three-car length winning margin. Lamberton finished third at LaFountain's bumper.
“I started out wanting to save my right sides for the last part of the race, but I was kicking myself, when the race stayed green for so long and those lead cars got away from me,” Bruno said. “I knew on the restart that Jamie would race me hard and clean and he did. I was worried about Lamberton and his new tire, but I had enough left.”
“We didn’t play that just right at the end,” Lamberton admitted. “The tire we put on needed 8-10 laps to come in and time ran out.”
Johnny Scarborough of Bomoseen, VT – in his first appearance of the season finished 4th one lap down. Derrick McGrew was next, followed by Tom Remington and Speedy Bresette. Durgan had to settle for 9th, one spot better than Heywood, who had tracked him closely for over 40 laps.
Kris Vernold of Queensbury despite some transmission troubles, withstood a late charge from Jessey Mueller and took the 358-Modified feature. It was the first 2014 win for Vernold’s KLD Mechanical 97.
“We broke something in the transmission in the heat race and I needed a push start to get out here for the feature, but it was worth it,” Vernold said. When Mueller passed 3rd-place finisher Pat McGrail just after halfway in the 30-lap feature, he was seven car-lengths away from Vernold. He reached Vernold on the white flag lap.
Chris Cayea and Todd Stone finished 4-5. The second half of the top-10 was Leon Gonyo, Roger Labreche, Kevin Broderick, Aaron Bartemy and Codie Aubin.
Lance Rabtoy, driving the Culligan Water/J&L Hardware No.11, took the lead from Ray Germain and went on to his 1st win and fifth top-5 finish in five starts.
Ryan Boutin and Shawn Duquette worked underneath Germain a lap later and placed 2nd and 3rd. Jamy Begor closed late for fourth with Germain fifth and Tylor Terry sixth.
CJ LaVair dominated the Busch Mini Modified feature. Scott Richner was the runner-up.
Article Credit: Airborne Park Speedway
Submitted By: JOHN WALKER