MONROE, Wash. — It’s official: John Zaretzke is back.
Not that the defending Evergreen Speedway and Washington state NASCAR champion was ever out of the battle to win a fourth Super Stock division title.
But for most of the season Zaretzke had finished behind points leader Naima Lang, who had racked up seven feature victories this year.
Not anymore.
Zaretzke swept a Super Stock doubleheader at Evergreen Speedway on Saturday, Aug. 30, winning both 50-lap races and cutting Lang’s points lead to a single point with two races to go.
Lang, who entered the evening with an 11-point lead, finished fifth in both races.
After winning his third then fourth straight races, Zaretzke’s comments from victory stage were nearly identical.
“I want to thank my crew,” he said after the first race. Then, after completing the sweep, he said: “I thank my race team, all the time they put it; they work on the car all week long.”
Despite the same driver winning both races, Saturday night’s bookend Super Stock features were very different.
The opener was stopped just twice for cautions, with Zaretzke passing Tom Berrow for the lead from the outside on a lap-18 restart.
Jeff Knight got around Berrow for second place on lap 35. Berrow held onto third for the final 15 laps, with Fred Hall finishing fourth.
It took two tries to get the Super Stock nightcap going, then the race was halted by eight yellow flags. Just 11 of the original 18 cars that started the race were still on the track to take the checkered flag.
Due to time constraints, race officials ended the race early on lap 47 with a green-white-checkered finish.
For the final half of the race, Zaretzke, James Mugge and Lang ran 1-2-3 through restart after restart, before Lang cut a tire on the white-flag lap.
Lang’s misfortune allowed Knight and then Ptacek to get past the points leader, and they finished third and fourth, respectively behind Zaretzke and Mugge.
Earlier in the race, after a lap 7 restart, Zaretzke, Mugge and Lang ran three-wide for the better part of a lap before Zaretzke pulled ahead to take second place behind Billy Weber.
Although he has never trailed Lang by more than 18 points since the season began in mid-April, Zaretzke didn’t win a feature race until July 12. Now with five wins in the past month and a half, Zaretzke’s title defense is heating up at just the right time.
“That’s a lot of hard work paying off,” team owner Frank Coleman said of the double victories.
Jill Lang went wire-to-wire in winning her third Bomber division feature race of the season on Saturday night.
Starting on the outside of the first row, Lang moved out front on lap 1 of the 30-lap race, and then held off Russ Hales through two yellows and two attempts at a green-white-checkered finish.
Defending champion and points leader Lane Sundholm finished second, passing Hales on the white-flag lap of the final green-white-checkered try, and Jim Foti was third. Hales finished fourth.
Former champion Mark Weedin passed Jon Roberts for the lead on the backstretch on lap 22 en route to his sixth Mini Stock feature victory of the season.
The 30-lap race was stopped twice for cautions, and ended with a green-white-checkered finish.
“I had to work real hard,” Weedin said from victory stage. “Now at the end of the year you start to figure things out. … I’m just glad to get another win.”
Roberts finished second and former champion Steve Jennings, making his season debut, came in third.
One for the sponsor: Wired X Energy Drinks sponsored the night’s racing at Evergreen Speedway.
Wired X also sponsors Jill Lang, which made her Bomber division victory a happy occurrence for the company’s personnel at the speedway.
Victory stage was decorated with Wired X merchandise and banners, which led Lang to declare after her victory: “The stage looks good, I really wanted to get up here.”
Class act: While Wired X sponsored the night, double Super Stock winner John Zaretzke is sponsored by rival energy drink ZippFizz.
Even so, after thanking his sponsor both times he climbed victory stage, Zaretzke did take the time to thank Wired X for all the company does to support local racing at Evergreen Speedway.
Quite a classy move.
The Boys is back: Dan Boys of Aldershot, England, returned to race at Evergreen Speedway on Saturday night. This is the fourth straight year that Boys has made the trip to Monroe to race.
Boys, who last visited Evergreen Speedway on May 10, said the NASCAR night doubleheader was circled on his calendar for some time as a date he wanted to return for some American-style late-model racing.
Once again, to honor Boys the speedway played “God Save the Queen” as well as “Oh, Canada” and “The Star Spangled Banner” as part of the pre-race festivities.
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