From Dean Mills
Placerville, CA — (June 4, 2016) — Despite two weeks off, Princeton California’s Mason Moore continued his hot streak in the 2016 Placerville Speedway Red Hawk Casino Championship Series in the Thompson’s Auto Group 360 Sprint Car division. Heading into the night, Moore had yet to finish outside the top five in the previous five events thus far in the season, and on Saturday night he continued to be the cream of the crop aboard his F & F Auto Racing number X1.
Starting on the outside front row alongside pole sitter Shawn Conde, Moore jumped into the lead and stretched an early lead over Conde, Jimmy Trulli, Steven Tiner and Greg DeCaires. The red flag flew after 1 lap was complete for 7th place starter Matt Barber who rode out a wild ride that ended up over the turn 4 fence. Fortunately, Barber emerged unscathed, and walked back to his trailer under his own power.
On the ensuing restart, Moore once again grabbed the lead but racing was halted again quickly when Cody Hodgson flipped without injury in turn 1 after contact with Bobby Butler.
From there, Moore would set sail and lead unchallenged over the next 20 laps while 4th place starter Steven Tiner would take 3rd from Trulli on lap 3, then overtake Conde for second on lap 18. Tiner began to reel in the leader in traffic over the final few laps, but Moore proved too strong and scored his second victory of the season.
“I have to thank the family that drew the number two pill for me on the front stretch tonight”, Moore explained. “The track was hard to pass on tonight and I was having a tough time with traffic when I saw the number 94 (of Steven Tiner) move to second on the scoreboard. I knew he was going to be railing the top, but I knew that once I lapped James Sweeney I was pretty comfortable running the bottom, because he would hold up Tiner. From there we just held on to win.”
With the victory, Moore extended his already commanding point lead to 61 over defending track champion Greg Decaires, who finished 3rd behind Tiner. Trulli finished 4th while Kenny Allen rounded out the top five.
Heat race victories went to DeCaires, Tiner, and Moore while Kenny Allen’s first visit of the year to Placerville netted him the Adco Driveline and Exhaust Quick Time Award with an elapsed time of 10.373 seconds. Bobby Butler earned the AL Driveline Hard Charger bonus moving up 5 spots from his 14th starting position.