{"id":16710,"date":"2016-10-25T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T20:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maineracing.com\/16\/?p=16710"},"modified":"2016-10-25T16:45:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T20:45:00","slug":"lee-usa-speedway-102316-race-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/2016\/10\/lee-usa-speedway-102316-race-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee USA Speedway 10\/23\/16 Race Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo

photo by Rich Hayes<\/p><\/div>\n

Lee, NH – Lee USA Speedway closed out the 2016 racing season with the running of 13 feature events which had been postponed at \u201cNew Hampshire\u2019s Center of Speed\u201d two weeks earlier, and it was Chelmsford, MA Modified ace Jon McKennedy who was clearly the star of the day.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

With twin 50-lap feature events on tap for the Valenti Modified Racing Series, McKennedy was in the proverbial driver\u2019s seat, and he capped off his 2016 championship run with dominating wins in both ends of the twinbill to cement his fourth career series championship title.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

McKennedy wasn\u2019t the only driver to double up during Oktoberfest 2016, though it took Hudson, NH Super Late Model standout Derek Griffith a couple of weeks longer to score his two wins. Griffith had won the opening Oktoberfest Super Late Model 50-lapper on Saturday<\/span><\/span> night, October 8, but when rain washed out Sunday<\/span><\/span> action, he had to wait two weeks for the re-schedule to complete his sweep.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But the layoff did nothing to slow Griffith and his Louie Mechalides-led team down, and he picked up right where he left off and once again stormed through the field to collect win number two on Sunday<\/span><\/span>, outrunning Chuck Colby and Eddie \u201cThe Outlaw\u201d MacDonald to collect the checkers.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

During the virtually non-stop feature event action that saw hundreds of cars make thousands of laps around the fast 3\/8th<\/sup>\u2018s mile oval, veteran Duane Skofield outran Lee\u2019s Justin Harris and Dan Poliquin to score the Northeast Classic Lites win, and Candia racer Dave Morrell picked up the 6-cylinder Ironman checkers over former champ Travis Hollins of Milford and Tewksbury, MA\u2019s Christin DeStefano.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Niko Maniatis of Hooksett, who has championships on his resume from both the weekly Roadrunners and Late Model Sportsmen at Lee USA, ran off to the win in the Oktoberfest Roadrunner main, with former Ironman champ Jack Victoria of Epping and 2016 Star champ Paul Wainwright rounding out the podium.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Tamworth hotshoe Jeremy Davis put in a strong run and claimed top honors in the Late Model Sportsman main, outfinishing 2015 champ Jay Sands of Hampton and Davis\u2019 car owner, multi-time champion Grant Aither of Exeter to score the victory.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Mark \u201cSparky\u201d MacIver was the best of the bunch if the Supermodified main event, taking the win over multi-time champion Tommy Tombarello, Jr. of Haverhill, MA , and Mike Murphy of Groveland, MA. Tombarello\u2019s crew had put in a long day of thrashing to recover from a practice crash, replacing the front axle among other things just to get him on track for the feature and the runner-up result.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Maniatis looked to join McKennedy and Griffith with double Oktoberfest wins when he returned to action for the North East Mini Stock Tour main, but after leading early and often, he eventually lost the top spot in lapped traffic, with longtime Oktoberfest standout Emerson Cayer going on to post the win over Maniatis and Brandon Gray of Thetford, VT.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

After dropping out while leading on the last lap of the Late Model Sportsman main, Stratham\u2019s Frankie Eldredge came from deep in the pack to score the Late Model win, topping one of the best races of the day, with Jeremy Davis second in the Grant Aither entry, and local favorite Miles Chipman improving on his Super Late Model finish with a solid third in the Shanna Sullivan machine.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Pelham\u2019s George Helliwell outran his car owner Jim Wentworth to score the 1100cc Dwarf Car open main event, while Justin Harris of Lee scored the 600cc victory over Ed Gilman and A.J. Giacomozzi. <\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

A post-race disqualification sent Burrillville, RI driver Corey Fanning to Hobby\/Strictly Stock victory lane, and Epping\u2019s Ricky Porter closed out the 2016 season with a dominating win that saw him just a couple of car lengths short of lapping the field on his way to victory in the Outlaw Mini Stock main event.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

The last two events left on the slate for 2016 are the annual \u201cBanquet of Champions\u201d to be held at the Executive Court Inn located in Manchester on November 5<\/span><\/span>, and the traditional Lee USA Flea Market a week later on November 12<\/span><\/span>. <\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

For more information on any upcoming event at Lee USA Speedway, call the race hotline at (978)462-4252<\/a>, log on to www.leeusaspeedway.com<\/span><\/a>, or follow us on Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lee, NH – Lee USA Speedway closed out the 2016 racing season with the running of 13 feature events which had been postponed at \u201cNew Hampshire\u2019s Center of Speed\u201d two weeks earlier, and it was Chelmsford, MA Modified ace Jon McKennedy who was clearly the star of the day. With twin 50-lap feature events on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,18,1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lee-speedway","category-maine-racing-news","category-uncategorized","category-new-england-racing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}