By Bob Burbach
Marysville-Marysville Raceway Park flipped on the lights for another entertaining evening of action as the Ace Hardware/Union Lumber night at the races was presented. Billy Wallace captured the MRP Winged Sprint Car feature in Mark Moore’s slick #1m. Mitch Machado claimed the hardware in the slam-bang MRP Super Stock finale as 3-time champ Tim Maclaughlin took the measure of the Pro 4 field. Jeremy Hawes swept the inaugural running of the MRP Hobby Stocks.
Wallace parlayed a front row start and two initial red flags into a wire-to-wire feature win as another full field of MRP Winged Sprint Cars did battle on MRP’s quick ribbon of clay. Red flags in the feature and in preliminary heat race competition kept the fans on the edge of their seats. Without having 40 MPH winds that the track endured last week, the MRP surface was hooked up and provided long green flag segments during most of the competition. The final checkered flag waved at about 9:45.
Jeremy Phillips, Derek Dozier, Brent Dothage and Wallace all claimed heat race wins in early race action. Hard luck chauffer Robby Hight took a wild ride in his heat race when a rear axle failure sent Hight into a wild series of gyrations on the front chute. His white 14h wound up at the top of turn 1 after the catapulting racer came to rest. Ironically the accident occurred after he had received the checkers in the event and had qualified for a solid start in the feature.
After hard flips by Jim Marsh and the ever-quick Gary Paulson on successive tries to start the feature race, Wallace got the jump on fellow front row starter Brad Bumgarner and rushed toward the checkers. Bumgarner stayed close and reeled in Wallace on a couple of occasions but was not able to get beside the fleet #1m.
A war was going on behind the lead duo as Corey Lovell, Colby Wiesz, Garry Burdick, Shawn Ternora and birthday girl Reyna Krueger slugged it out for 3rd through 7th. 3 time champ Brent Dothage was in this mix as well early on, but Dothage retired at ½ way in the exciting contest. Lovell beat Wiesz and Burdick to the checkers to claim 3rd position.
Wallace was all smiles in victory lane and swept into the point lead after last week’s 3rd place finish in the opener. Wallace is a 2-time champion at Placerville and could be on the way to a championship here. This combination of Wallace and car owner Moore seems to have “clicked” right out of the box.