Tony Stewart held off Hailie Deegan over a pair of late restarts at Eldora Speedway to claim his first Camping World SRX victory of the season.
For much of the night, the battle was for second place with Deegan, Ryan Newman and Ken Schrader all taking turns hounding “Smoke” throughout the 75-lap main event. With his feature victory, Stewart completed a clean sweep of the night following his victories in the first heat from the third starting position and winning the second heat after a complete inversion of the first heat’s running order.
“I have so many mixed emotions because I see tonight from a driver standpoint, a track owner standpoint and a series standpoint,” said Stewart. “It’s special to race here, much less win here, because I haven’t even raced here in a long time. So when we did our ESPN interview, I wanted them to pick off the crowd, the fans, so I told my crew chief that we were going to climb the fence. He told me I was crazy, but I told him that’s exactly what we’re going to do, and we dragged TV over there and they were going nuts for it. This was a special win and a special night for me.”
For Deegan, the runner-up finish testified to her growing confidence in amongst the oval racing veterans.
“It was special. I have gained a lot of confidence the past two weeks especially, racing against these guys, and I think I had started to lose some of it this year,” she said. “It’s been a challenging year on the Truck Series side, and I needed some races like this to remind me that I can get on the wheel, be aggressive, and continue to get better. I really feel like we were all racing for second but that was intense racing with Ryan too. Everyone is just so good in these cars.”
With a third-place finish in the feature, Newman inched closer to a series championship, needing only a top five in the final feature of the season at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., to seal the accomplishment. He could also claim the championship though heat race points next week. Stewart is second, 39 points behind, while reigning champion Marco Andretti is third, 47 points back.
“The championship really does matter to me and I think you see it in my results with top-fives in each race, a couple of podiums, and it’s something I have really put a lot into after last year,” Newman said. “I’m proud of my consistency this year especially when you think of the caliber of drivers that have come in here this year and to compete at that level. Winning the championship would mean a lot to me next week and I just hope we can add a win at Lucas Oil. That would be the perfect way to close out and send our season home, climbing the top step of the podium.”
The feature was also a survival race as Schrader, Brad Keselowski and Ron Capps all raced their way into the top-five at various points of the night only to find trouble around one of the treacherous dirt corners. The Camping World SRX road crew was challenged early in the night when a five-car crash terminally damaged two of the competitor’s cars. That crash began when Austin Dillon ruptured a radiator hose due to engine overheating, sending his car into the wall, and dropping so much water on the backstretch of the Turn 3 clay half-mile that several others just piled into the melee. Deegan, Marco Andretti, Tony Kanaan and Chase Briscoe were all collected in the ordeal.
Andretti and Deegan, full-time championship drivers, were placed in backup cars for the rest of the night while Kanaan was sidelined for the evening.
Briscoe, making his Camping World SRX debut, had been excited to race against his hero and NASCAR boss Stewart, and still got to accomplish the goal by the end of the night, as the road crew was able to repair the No. 57 by halfway through the feature. Briscoe completed the race and was able to go side-by-side with Stewart at least once in the night.
