Hearn Claims First Valley Win of 2015 on Dangerous Night

Hearn Claims First Valley Win of 2015 on Dangerous Night
by Phil Allaway

West Lebanon, NY: Saturday night got off to a dangerous start before warm-ups even began.  Tyler Dippel and one of his crewmembers were injured when the lift gate on Dippel’s hauler hit them.  Both were taken to Albany Medical Center.  Dippel has a bruised pelvis and hip, while his crewmember has a broken left leg and broken nose.  Needless to say, the incident put Dippel out of both the Modified and Small Block Modified classes for the night.

Once the feature came along, Brett Hearn was hungry and wanted to add to his trophy collection.  Starting 14^th, Hearn made short work of much of the field to get into the top-5.

On lap 4, Brian Berger and Kyle Armstrong came together in turn 4 and went into the wall, bringing out the first caution.  Kolby Schroder was also collected.  All three drivers drove away from the crash.  While Berger and Armstrong were out on the spot despite getting back to the pits on their own, Schroder continued after a tire change and repairs.

On the restart, Hearn continued to make his presence known.  He immediately moved up to third on the restart.  On the next lap, Hearn took second away from Chad Jeseo.  From there, Hearn set his sights on pole-sitter and early leader Steve Hough, who just so happened to be debuting a new car that Hearn’s team prepared.

Hearn ran down Hough and proceeded to hound the veteran for several laps.  Eventually, Hearn was able to get past on the inside in turn 4 on Lap 15.  From there, Hearn began to pull away and it looked an easy victory.  Not so fast.

Andy Bachetti dropped fluid in turn 3 on lap 21, which led to a crash involving Rob Pitcher and Schroder to bring out another caution that bunched up the field.  On the restart, Kenny Tremont, Jr. made a great move to advance from seventh to third, but with a significant gap to Hough.  Another quick caution due to a blown right rear tire for Mike King bottled the field up again.

Tremont was able to get by Hough on the restart for second, and thanks to wall contact for Keith Flach, got one more shot at Hearn.  While Tremont did dip his nose to the inside, he could not get past Hearn, who earned his 86^th career Modified win at Lebanon Valley. 

Afterwards, Hearn was very happy with his Modified on the evening.

“It was awesome; awesome right from the start,” Hearn said at his hauler.  “This week was different; last week, [the strongest contenders] had a head start.  On an even footing, the results were a little different.”

For Tremont, he was not that disappointed in failing to run his streak to three in a row.  He could take solace in the fact that suspension changes made post-feature allowed him to make the inside move on Hearn work to win the Dirt Track Outlaws Shootout later in the evening.

In the Small Block Modified feature, J.R. Heffner’s drivetrain issues that prevented him from starting the first Small Block Modified feature of the season resulted in him starting from pole after winning his heat race.  From there, Heffner got an excellent jump on Jason Herrington on the start and was gone.

The top-3 drivers (Heffner, Herrington and Shane Jablonka) spent much of the race by themselves.  Behind them, Kim LaVoy and rookie Peter Carlotto battled early on for fourth before the Alexis Diner-sponsored veteran emerged victorious.

Further back, Brett Haas had to battle from the 13^th starting spot and found the going rather difficult at times.  While he eventually got back to a sixth-place finish, he explained afterwards that it was one of the most difficult races that he’d run in quite a while.

Heffner would not be caught on the way to his first Small Block Modified.  Herrington was second, while Jablonka was a distant third.  LaVoy was fourth, while Alan Houghtaling was fifth.

In Pro Stock, Paul LaRochelle started on pole and easily out-sprinted Sparky Riley to turn 1.  Early on, there were no real suitors that could challenge LaRochelle’s advantage.  However, as the race continued on, Jay Corbin rose to the challenge.  After starting in ninth, Corbin slowly drove himself up into contention, eventually taking second around halfway.  Slowly but surely, Corbin ran down LaRochelle, setting up a repeat of last week’s challenge. 

Corbin dove to the inside multiple times to get by LaRochelle with a few laps to go.  Contact was made between the two drivers on a couple of occasions.  No one spun out through all of the hard racing.  On the final lap, Corbin went to the inside once again.  The two drivers used each other up coming out of turn 4, but LaRochelle was able to hold on to take the win.  Expect this on-track battle to last the whole season

In Pure Stock, Shawn Perez, Bill Deak, Sr. and Ed Hatch each won features.  The second feature saw the worst crash of the night when Joe Landry spun and hit the wall on the backstretch at the crossover gate.  Landry’s No. 45 was launched into the air, where it was hit (while rolling over) by Rob Partridge.  Landry had to be cut out of the car and was taken to Albany Medical Center.  According to family members, Landry has no broken bones and was discharged late Saturday night.  He is still very sore, though.

In the 4-Cylinder class, Kenny Stager won overall and in the Dual-Cam class.  Jim Williams won the Single-cam class while finishing fourth overall.

Results:

Oontractor Sales Co. Inc. and Slovak Excavating Modified Feature (30 laps): 1) 20- Brett Hearn, 2) 115- Kenny Tremont, Jr., 3) 34- Steve Hough, 4) 47- Jeff Watson, 5) 98- Eddie Marshall, 6) 42- Kyle Sheldon, 7) 87x- Paul Gilardi, 8) 25- Chad Jeseo, 9) 45- Wayne Jelley, 10) 74- J.R. Heffner, 11) 55- Mike King, 12) 43- Keith Flach, 13) 34B- Andy Bachetti, 14) 17R- Elmo Reckner, 15) 17- Rob Pitcher, 16) 81- D.J. Faulkner, 17) 16- Kyle Hoffman, 18) 98S- Kolby Schroder, 19) 816- Jeff Rockefeller, 20) 1X- Denny Soltis, 21) 11A- Kyle Armstrong, 22) 60- Brian Berger, 23) 42P- Matt Pupello, 24) 23- Olden Dwyer,

DNS: 12- Tyler Chartrand (Crash), 1- Tyler Dippel, 6- Ken McGuire, 24S- Rich Salisbury

Dirt Track Outlaws Shootout Results:

Round 1: 42- Kyle Sheldon defeats 45- Wayne Jelley

Round 2: 42- Kyle Sheldon defeats 74- J.R. Heffner by walkover

Round 3: 115- Kenny Tremont, Jr. defeats 42- Kyle Sheldon

Final Round: 115- Kenny Tremont, Jr. defeats 20- Brett Hearn

Small Block Modified Feature Results (24 laps): 1) 74- J.R. Heffner, 2) 1- Jason Herrington, 3) 44X- Shane Jablonka, 4) 3- Kim LaVoy, 5) 250- Alan Houghtaling, 6) 55- Brett Haas, 7) 12C- Peter Carlotto, 8) 7T- Timothy Davis, 9) 88JR- Olden Dwyer, 10) 45- Wayne Jelley, 11) 72- Ray Hall, Jr., 12) 12- Brian Sandstedt, 13) 115- Kenny Tremont, Jr., 14) 21- Ryan Darcy, 15) 10C- Ryan Charland, 16) 83- Chad Pierce, 17) 20- David Schilling, 18) 111- Demetrios Drellos, 19) 44- Jeff Kelley, 20) 82- Brian Peterson, 21) 6- Bryan McGuire, 22) 6R- Ryan Heath

DNS: 13- Frank Hoard, III, 25-Frank Harper, 43JR- Kenny Aanonsen, Jr. (Crash), 1T- Tyler Dippel

Pro Stock Feature Results (20 laps): 1) 78- Paul LaRochelle, 2) 8- Jay Corbin, 3) 24- Robbie Speed, 4) 463- Daniel Sanchez, 5) 7- Rob Yetman, 6) 315- Jon Routhier, 7) 317- Frank Twing, 8) 17- Nick Hilt, 9) 178- Steven LaRochelle, 10) 07- Tom Harkins, 11) 23- Chuck Towslee, 12) 04x- Chad Arsenault, 13) 441- Sparky Riley, 14) 60- Joe LaFlamme, 15) 29- Rick Duzlak, 16) 4- Chris Lunn

DNS: 35- Rick Dempsey (Engine), 2- Hugh Page, 77- Paul Rogers

Pure Stock Features:
Pure Stock Feature No. 1 Results (8 laps): 1) 09- Shawn Perez, 2) 144- Tim Thompson, 3) 44- Terry McNamara, 4) 08- Lou Gancarz, 5) 47- Scott Kilmer, 6) 13- Dan Cote, 7) 71- Travis Hengen, 8) 80G- Gary Vandenburg, 9) 03- Harold Robitaille, 10) 22R- Raymond Royals, 11) 99- Phil Sherman, 12) 05- Rich Smith.  DNS: 52- Dennis O’Connor, Jr.

Pure Stock Feature No. 2 Results (8 laps): 1) 98- Bill Deak, Sr., 2) 43- Brian Walsh, 3) 34- Jim Gronki, 4) 89- Keri Vandenburg, 5) 53- Joe Cheneil, 6) 155- Martina Martin, 7) 63- Joe Wolcott, 8) 22- Rob Partridge, 9) 45- Joe Landry, 10) 86X- Bill Deak, Jr., 11) 84- Scott Morris, 12) 30- Wuggie Burdick

Pure Stock Feature No. 3 Results (12 laps): 1) 50- Ed Hatch, 2) 92- Mike Eichstedt, 3) 51- Jason Meltz, 4) 55- Dave Stickles, 5) 27- Ray Hall, Sr., 6) 14- Al Relyea, 7) 5X- Jeff Meltz, Sr., 8) 013P- Jesse Murphy, 9) 17- Clifford Booth, 10) 57- Gary O’Brien, 11) 31- Jeff Kreutziger, 12) 35- Dylan Fachini, 13) 74- Larry Perez

4-Cylinder Feature Results (15 laps, class finish will be in parentheses after each competitor): 1) 128D- Kenny Stager (1d), 2) 478D- Chris Vandeputte (2d), 3) 8D- Todd Goldstein (3d), 4) 15S- Jim Williams (1s), 5) 17S- Jeff Meltz (2s), 6) 5S- Brandon Ely (3s), 7) 14S- Jethro Rossan (4s), 8) 69S- Gary Malloy (5s), 9) 6D- Kelly Duncan (4d), 10) 515s- Tim Meltz (6s), 11) 12S- Stephen Cameron, Jr. (7s), 12) 821s- Scott Corbosiero (8s), 13) 309s- Matt McCuin (9s), 14) 16S- Steve Burbank (10s), 15) 163D- Alyssia Sanchez (5d), 16) 18D- Jared Powell (6d), 17) 9S- Karen Verhagen (11s)

For more information, the 2015 schedule, and links to what's on tap for 2015, visit our website at www.LebanonValley.com, and click on “Speedway”, or call the LVAR Offices during regular business hours at (518) 794-9606 or (518) 794-9965.

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