The Texas Roadhouse North East Mini Stock Tour kicked off the 2nd half of its 2014 season at Star Speedway in Epping, NH on Saturday with the tour hosting its highest car count ever at Star. 26 of the Twisted Tea touring mini stocks rolled into the paddock area and prepared their cars for a 50 lap feature and the first under a new $100 Bounty put on current point leader Toby Wells.Emerson Cayer, Justin King, and Toby Wells all won their respective heats with great battles throughout each field exciting the crowd for the main event of the evening. Cayer drew an invert chip of 4 rows to set the field for the feature with Trombley and Helliwell set to lead the field to green. Cayer and Wells would start 11th and 12th due to NEMST rules not allowing current year winners to start within the top 10.
The initial green was short lived as Nick Maniatis pushed it 3 wide into turn one and was clipped and collected by Mike Viens and Justin King, King would be done for the evening following his excellent heat race performance. The field was reset and returned to a clean green, Trombley broke out to the early lead with Helliwell, Maniatis, and Larsen quickly following in tow.
Wells quickly moved through the field chasing his drive for 5 in a row and was able to make a bid for the lead on lap 12. Maniatis, Trombley, and Larsen were slicing and dicing behind Wells as the leaders freight train approached lap traffic. Contact between Trombley and a lapped car put the event under caution on lap 38 while collecting Maniatis and ending his night as well. Trombley returned to the track as the leader Toby Wells slowed in turn 3 without the engine running. Wells was pushed off the track and Cayer, Larsen and Helliwell were left to battle it out.
Cayer broke out to the early lead as Larsen had a broken transmission. Larsen began the chase for the top spot and stalked Cayer around the quarter-mile track. Larsen caught Cayer with 5 to go and got underneath him on the back stretch of lap 48. Larsen dove hard into turn 3 and pushed high allowing Cayer to slam into a crossover move to get the white flag. Larsen drove deep into turn 1 once again clashing tires with Cayer but was unable to hold on to the top spot as Cayer took home the victory, his second of the season.
Larsen, Helliwell, Anderson, and Viens rounded out the top 5. Cayer would close the points from 63 points behind entering the event to a mere 6 points. Anderson and Larsen also closed closer together only 12 points apart in a tight battle for Rookie of the Year honors.
The next NEMST event is the largest in the history of the tour and will be held on the 1 Mile NASCAR Oval in Loudon, NH August 3rd. The event will have a unique prestige for the production style 4 cylinders to run on the same track as NASCAR cars and is expected to bring over 60 cars to qualify. Cars from as far as Virginia, Ohio, and Alabama have called to express their interest in running the event. For more information please check out www.northeastministocktour.com or give us a Like on Facebook!
Full results can be found here: http://northeastministocktour.