Knight, Kneeland first time winners at Evergreen Speedway

Published 1:38 pm Sunday, June 22, 2008

Jayme Barnes of Everett won the 37th annual Jim Raper Memorial Dirt Cup on Saturday at Skagit Speedway. Read about it, and see the complete results, here: (CLICK HERE).

Saturday night at Evergreen Speedway I met a great 11-year-old named Kelton Little. Kelton is battling cancer, and he was at the speedway as the special guest of the min-stock division. Read more about Kelton here: (CLICK HERE).

My Evergreen Speedway notebook is here: (CLICK HERE), and the complete — but unofficial — results from Saturday are here: (CLICK HERE).

Saturday night a pair of first-time winners joined two drivers who are old hands at climbing Evergreen Speedway’s victory stage.

Jeff Knight and Joe Kneeland hoisted feature race trophies for the first time in the super stock and bomber divisions respectively.

Defending super figure eight champion John Carlson and former mini-stock champion Mark Weedin also won their respective features.

Knight led just three laps of the 40-lap super stock feature, but they were the final three laps.

Darin Stordahl, who has been racing as part of the ASA Northwest Tour this season, made his Evergreen Speedway season debut and was leading when Daniel Moore spun-out on lap 32, bringing out the yellow flag.

Knight re-started outside of Stordahl on the front row on lap 35, and he edged to the lead while holding the high line around the three-eighths mile oval.

Coming out of turn 4 Stordahl got loose in the middle of three-wide racing, and defending champion John Zaretzke turned him around, bringing out the final caution and setting up a green-white-checkered finish.

Knight held off Kelly Mann and James Mugge on the final restart, taking his first super stock checkered flag in just his second season of racing late models.

“It was fun,” Knight said later in the evening, with a voice hoarse from celebrating. “It was a battle well fought.”

Mann, who started near the back of the field, finished second, James Mugge was third, Mike Holden came in fourth and Steve Ptacek rounded out the top five.

Mann and Naima Lang won the heat races.

Lang passed Stordahl for the lead on a lap-18 restart, but two cautions later he had to pit with a flat tire. Lang finished 12th.

The fifth victory of the season for Carlson, who also won the 60 Minutes of FEAR, began just like the others: with Carlson starting in the back of the field.

Carlson and Ricky Deitz methodically worked their way from the rear to the front on Saturday to finish one-two.

Quinten Borreson built a large lead over Nick Gunderson in the early going, but once Carlson moved around Gunderson for second he quickly closed on the leader.

From lap 23 to lap 31 Carlson and Borreson raced nose-to-tail, with the defending champion using lapped traffic to his advantage in getting around for the lead.

Deitz followed in Carlson’s wake to take second place in the 35-lap feature. Borreson was third, Troy Seminar finished fourth and Michael Barnes rounded out the top five.

“(Borreson) told me ‘I’m going to give you a run for the money,’” Carlson said from victory stage after the race. “What a blast.”

Nick Dunham and Nick Gunderson won the heat races.

Kneeland proved to be too much for points leader Jim Foti and two-time winner Jill Lang in the bomber main.

Kneeland took second away from Darrel Lutovsky on lap 8, then passed David Stewart Jr. for the lead one lap later en route to his first feature victory.

Despite three-wide racing in all corners — a hallmark of bomber division racing this season — there was just one caution in the 30-lap race.

Foti finished second, Jill Lang was third, Lane Sundholm came in fourth and Frank Cowgill rounded out the top five.

Lang and Sundholm won the heat races.

After passing Joe Hobbs on lap 18, Weedin drove away with his fourth mini-stock feature win of the season.

Defending champion Chuck Richards followed Weedin around Hobbs a lap later, but couldn’t close the gap.

Hobbs, who finished third, battled Robert Cooke for the lead in the early going of the 30-lap race, finally getting ahead on lap 4.

Brent Rohrer finished fourth and Andrew Schukar was fifth.

Mindy Harriss, Weedin and Rohrer were the heat winners.