At age 17, Ripon’s Ethan Nascimento looked more like a seasoned veteran as he drove to his career-first victory in a Stockton Late Model at the 99 Speedway on Saturday night.
“First of all, I have to thank all my guys for all of their hard work. We brought this car out of retirement and haven’t run it in quite a while and they made it great,” said Nascimento of his crew, which includes his older brother Eric, the 2020 Stockton 99 Speedway track champion.
Starting alongside Stockton’s Larry Tankersley at the front of the strong 16-car field, which included five former track champions, Nascimento quickly moved to the front of the pack while a host of others jockeyed for position right behind him to open the 50-lap feature.
Nascimento would briefly lose the lead for the only time in the race to Stockton’s JoJo Stearns following a caution restart on lap 8, but he was soon able to regain it after a side-by-side battle that lasted for several laps.
Soon after, Tankersley was also able to squeeze past Stearns and proceeded to stalk Nascimento relentlessly over the next 30 laps. Despite constant pressure, Nascimento never faltered and Tankersley gradually fell off the leader’s pace as his tires began to wear down.
However, Nascimento was not out of the woods yet, barely surviving a late-race restart when Tankersley drifted up into him. Although Stearns was able to take advantage of the incident to move by Tankersley, he had nothing left for Nascimento and finished in second place about four car lengths behind Nascimento.
“As we came off the corner he (Tankersley) got a little loose and bounced off of me, but luckily I was able to keep it straight,” Nascimento said. “I knew it was time to go so I put my head down and did everything I could to get to the finish line.”
Tankersley held on for third while Escalon’s Sam Solari and Tracy’s Justin Philpott rounded out the top five.
Manteca’s Joe Flowers was looking forward to starting alongside his son AJ Flowers, of Stockton, from the front row of the 20-lap Mini Stock main, but unfortunately, the family shootout never materialized as his son’s car failed to fire during the formation lap.
Stockton’s Ethan Rumsey moved up into AJ’s vacated position and proceeded to give the elder Flowers all he could handle by immediately jumping into the race lead. Flowers stayed glued to Rumsey’s tailpipe over the first half of the race before diving underneath him on lap 12 to take over the top spot.
Once in the lead, Flowers would never look back as he rolled to the victory over Rumsey and Manteca’s Jordan Mast for his second consecutive win of the season.
“Ethan was running really strong and I had a little trouble staying up with him, but I always knew I could catch him,” explained Flowers. “He was running so fast that I knew he would eventually wear his stuff out. I laid back a bit, let him heat his tires up, and then moved around him.”
Although there were nine entries in the Grand American Modified division, the 35-lap main essentially turned into a match race between Rio Linda’s Eric Price and Tracy’s Scott Winters.
Starting from the front row, Price grabbed the early lead and spent the remainder of the race fighting off the repeated challenges of Winters, who used everything in his arsenal to get around Price. Winters repeatedly tried to go both high and low and although he was able to get the nose of his car under Price’s car on multiple occasions, he was never able to complete the pass and was forced to settle for second place well ahead of Modesto’s Adam Coonfield.
“It is always kind of a cat-and-mouse game with Scott. He is a very smart racer and he knows how to save his stuff so I had to make sure I had enough left in the tank to fend him off at the end,” explained Price.
Although the Fourth of July was some two weeks ago, Lodi’s Brandon Jones and Valley Springs’ Chad Holman provided plenty of fireworks in the Pure Stock 20-lap feature as the pair banged on each other and traded paint on multiple occasions. Jones seemed to get the worst of a couple of their close encounters, twice having to dive into the pits during a caution to replace a flat front tire.
However, Jones would get the last laugh when he hammered his way past Holman on lap 13 and then held on for dear life as Holman desperately tried to get close enough to put his front bumper on him over the final laps.
“I really had to earn this one. It feels good,” exclaimed Jones. “They all want to beat me or at least they all try to.”
