Six-time champion Harrison challenges Hoffman early, retires after contact with wall
Five nights, five races, five wins. Nick Hoffman is on one of the most dominant winning streaks in DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals history.
Through those five races, there’s been 130 total Feature laps contested. Hoffman has led every single one. Even with the tough competition on the roster for Saturday night’s race at Fairbury Speedway, nothing could shake his concentration.
“I had a memory pop up on my Facebook today of two years ago [during] Summer Nationals, and it was a quote that I was off to a rough start to Summer Nationals, and man, this is the total opposite,” Hoffman said in Victory Lane.
The one and only six-time Summit Modified champion Mike Harrison, of Highland, IL, made the trip to Fairbury and initially looked to be a serious threat to Hoffman’s win streak, winning his Heat Race and lining up fourth for the start of the Feature.
Harrison jumped right into second on Lap 3 of the 30-lap event, pounding the cushion very aggressively, engine wound-up as he went in hot pursuit of leader Hoffman. But it didn’t last him the whole race.
With 11 laps remaining, having already scraped the outside wall several times, Harrison’s right-front tire gave out and sent him into the Turn 1 wall, ending his night early.
“He gets away with it a lot of times running up there, and sometimes it’ll bite ya,” Hoffman said of the incident. “Right before that happened, I found a ton of grip about a lane off the cushion. I felt like it would’ve been a pretty good race there because I picked up a bunch of pace.”
Curt Spalding inherited the runner-up spot for the restart but did not have anything for the three-time and defending champ Hoffman, who drove away with the $2,000 winner’s check. Nick Allen, Tommy Sheppard Jr. and Allen Weisser completed the top-five.
UP NEXT
Round #6 of the 2021 DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals campaign hits Indiana’s Plymouth Speedway on Sunday night, June 20. Catch all the action live on DIRTVision.
ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view full results)
Feature (30 Laps) 1. 2-Nick Hoffman[1]; 2. 5CS-Curt Spalding[6]; 3. 21A-Nick Allen[2]; 4. T6-Tommy Sheppard Jr[3]; 5. 25W-Allen Weisser[11]; 6. 1W-Bob Pohlman[14]; 7. 9H-John Demoss[7]; 8. 0-Travis Kohler[22]; 9. 24Z-Zeke McKenzie[16]; 10. 45-Kyle Hammer[19]; 11. 64-Dawson Cook[18]; 12. 35-Ethan Weber[17]; 13. 36-Eric Vaughan[21]; 14. 11S-Nick Seplak[5]; 15. 22C-Nick Clubb[10]; 16. 5-Steven Brooks[13]; 17. 24H-Mike Harrison[4]; 18. 8K-Levi Kissinger[8]; 19. 37-Michael Ledford[9]; 20. 22- Wade Wenthe[12]; 21. 88S-Alan Stipp[15]; 22. 17-Mike Mosier[20]
