NCTS: Mark Dilley Comes Out Victorious After Last Lap Incident in Wild Wing 300

Short tracks always seem to bring close racing and the Wild Wing 300 presented by Independent Electric Saturday night at Barrie Speedway for the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series was no exception as there would be contact with the leaders in the final laps.

On the green-white-checkered restart, Kerry Micks and JR Fitzpatrick would start side-by-side. With history being on their side with past incidents between them, the eventual contact of Micks spinning Fitzpatrick around was no surprise.

Though amidst the smoke, Mark Dilley would find his way past both Mick sand Fitzpatrick to score his third career victory.

“I just thought I’d stay as close as I could to everybody and that way by the time they went, I would go through,” he said. “They just tapped just going down in 1 there and I just seen smoke and I just turned left as hard as I could and floored it and we got lucky.”

Dilley had qualified the car in the seventh position, though ended up starting at the back of the 22 car field to start the race. This mark’s Dilley’s first win since Cayuga Motor Speedway in 2008.

“Its good to win in your hometown and all that,” he said in victory lane. “Barrie Speedway has been good to me obviously over the years with the racing. It was just a good race. The guys did a great job on the pit stops. We had to go to the back at the beginning and I just tried to keep my head and not knock the wheels off it and it just worked out good.

“I can’t thank Rheem, PartSource, all the sponsors enough. They make it possible. They’ve been sticking with us through thick and thin so I mean this one’s all for them.”

Jason Hathaway would grab second and Kerry Micks would end up third at the end of it all.

“We started 12th and tried to be real calm coming through and I think we did a real good job there,” Micks said afterwards. “We got all the way up to the lead there without too much damage to anything or anybody. J.R. goes through my spotter and says, ‘Let’s just have a nice clean race here’ and I said, ‘Okay. That sounds good to me.’

“And we go into the second corner and he puts me completely sideways and you know that’s just not right. When you got your man’s word to say something like that and I said okay, and just didn’t happen. He put me sideways and I said, ‘I’m not taking that’.

“Then we’re going down the front straightaway and he puts me in the front wall. I’m passing him on the outside and he puts in the wall. I said, ‘What are you thinking?’

“Anyways, I don’t want to race that and its just too bad, but I don’t take any…..”

Don Thomson Jr. would come home fourth followed by Jeff Lapcevich, Brad Graham, DJ Kennington, Joey McColm, Fitzpatrick and Chris Raabe. Kennington would rally back to a seventh place finish after spinning to bring out the final caution of the evening.

Meanwhile Kennington’s points rival and the pole sitter, Scott Steckly, would lead 147 laps before having a wheel issue, which caused him to finish 15th. Steckly now leads Kennington by 69 points with two races remaining.

The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series will be back in action next weekend on September 17th with the Komatsu 300 presented by Wilson Equipment at Riverside International Speedway.