Brett Hearn ends winless streak at Albany-Saratoga
MALTA, NY » Some drivers go for years without winning a race.
But when Brett Hearn goes on a 10race winless drought, it becomes news.
Hearn ended one of the longest dry spells of his career at Albany-Saratoga Speedway Friday night when he recorded his first win of the season in the 35-lap modified feature.
Hearn recorded the 900th win of his career at the historic Malta track on Aug. 4, 2017, but hadn’t been to victory lane again until Friday night, a stretch of 10 races. And Hearn’s night started out badly, when he got into a jingle in his heat race and the car of Demetrios Drellos wound up sitting across the front of Hearn’s modified.
But after a quick trip to the pits, Hearn came out and easily qualified for the feature. After some early slicing and dicing in the modified feature, Bobby Hackel IV took over the point, Keith Flach right with him. Twice, Flach appeared to take the lead, but each time a yellow flag flew put Hackel back into the top spot.
Hearn, who had started 15th, moved into third place on lap 15 and with Hackel setting the pace and getting wound up on the high side of the speedway, Hearn began to run side-byside with Flach in a battle for second.
The complexion of the race changed entirely on lap 22 when Hackel began to get into heavy traffic. On lap 23, Hackel saw his preferred path was blocked by a lapped car, and tried to squeeze to the inside. But Flach was
already there, and he and Hackel made contact, with Hackel getting completely sideways, and dropping to third behind Flach and Hearn.
But as soon as the leaders got to the other end of the speedway, Flach made heavy contact with the car of Brian Gleason, and Hearn rocketed into the lead.
From there, it was just a matter of outrunning Ronnie Johnson and Hackel for Hearn to come away with the 132nd win of his career at Albany-Saratoga Speedway.
“The way things go here, you’ve got to get a lot of spots early,” said Hearn of his quick charge to the top three. “But it’s not easy.”
In the annual Mark Hughes Memorial sportsman feature, Joey Scarborough held off Tim Hartman Jr. to win the 25-lap event. Scarborough had started fifth, but took the lead away from Nick Lussier going into the third turn on lap 11.
Hartman Jr. charged from his 15th starting spot to move into the runnerup spot on lap 22, then got into a one-lap shootout with Scarborough when the final yellow of the race came out with one to go. But Scarborough got a good jump on the restart and beat Hartman to the checkered flag.
Dylan Bokus chalked up the first win of his career in the 20-lap limited sportsman race, which was run as a dedication to Scott Flanders. Bokus got the lead on lap eight when polesitter Emily Quinn pushed up in the fourth turn and outran Justin Buff to the finish line.
Josh Coonradt won the pro-stock feature, his second victory of the season, and Randy Miller continued to dominate the street stock class, getting his fourth win in as many starts.
Steve Ryan and David Frame were victorious in the double mini-stock features.