Lee USA Hoosier Tire East 100 5.17.15

Posted By Wayne G. Barber

Pasteryak Takes Round One of Tri-Track Series

　

Lee USA Speedway Lee, NH.

Photo by Simply the Best, Crystal Snape

Chris Pasteryak of Lisbon, CT had the hot hand at the Lee USA Speedway Sunday afternoon when he drove to the Hoosier Tire East 100 feature victory. It was the first stop for the Tri-Track modified series.

Besting a stellar field, Pasteryak qualified well enough to start from the third row and keep the leaders in sight. By lap 10 pole sitter Woody Pitkat of Stafford Springs, CT pulled out to an eight car draft lead, while the next 20 cars ran side-by-side, nose to tail. A lap 18 yellow flag for a scramble in turn one slowed the action briefly. On the restart, Pitkat and hard charging Steve Masse of Bellingham, MA led the field to green and Masse stalked Pitkat until lap 24, when Masse powered by on the inside to become the new race leader.

As Masse and Pitkat raced out to a comfortable lead, Mike Douglas Jr. flexed his muscle and drove from 7th to 3rd place in the next 10 laps.

The quick pace Masse was setting had him lapping slower cars by lap 40. At the half way mark Masse and Pitkat led a steadily gaining Douglas, Pasteryak and Ryan Preece.

By lap 60 Douglas's aggressive style saw him start to fade, dropping him quickly back to ninth place. Not to be outdone, Richard Savary, a regular on the MRS tour, picked off cars with his march to the front. After restarting from the rear he found himself cruising inside the top 10.
 

With the laps winding down it was Pasteryak's turn to make his move and he out drove Preece in turn three taking over third place, at the same time Pitkat ran on the outside of Masse. Pitkat couldn't pull off the move for the lead, but it gave Pasteryak the opportunity to catch the leaders and pull off his own move putting both Masse and Pitkat in his rear view mirror on lap 89.

It looked like it might be an easy run from there, but the second caution of the afternoon came on lap 97, just as Todd Annarummo got past Preece and Masse for third.

Now it was a three lap shootout for the victory between Pasteryak, Pitkat, Annarummo and Seuss. Masse and Preece pitted for tires, dropping them from contention.

Annarummo, who almost won this race one year ago, pulled off an outstanding restart to slip by Pitkat, but he could only follow Pasteryak to the finish line with Pitkat, Seuss and Anthony Nocella rounding out the top five. Driving a heads-up race, Richard Savary had to be the hard charger of the day coming from a last-place restart on lap 18 to finish sixth.

A jubilant Pasteryak said,"starting inside the top five helped us, I paced myself off Ryan Preece (race leader) and saved my equipment, you know, he's usually around at the end of these things. And with no cautions the next thing I knew it was lap 75 or 80 and it turned into a track position race so I started charging and caught the leaders in a hurry. Then Steven (Masse) came off turn two, got a little loose, which killed Woody's momentum leaving the bottom open. I expected caution at some point mid-race, but I'm happy it didn't happen. I set a pace for myself and it's just racing at Lee, it's not the car, it's not the tires, it's the track, but it was certainly better to be towards the front.

We've got four races on this new car with three good finishes and a tenth at Monadnock (speedway) with a slipping clutch, but we got that worked out. It wasn't slipping today"

Runner-up Annarummo said "I was in a conservative mode from the start like everybody else, when it got late in the race and there were no cautions we turned up the wick a little bit and chased them down. We just missed the setup a little, and Chris (Pasteryak) was better than us, he could get off the corner better than us. We destroyed it in practice so I'll take a second-place finish".

Pitkat was happy with his third place finish and commented "Car's in one piece and we can go on to Stafford and see what we can do there. Here it was a pretty good race except for some lapped cars that held me up for a while, and its competitors I race with in another division, so I'll just put that in the back of my head. Now I'd like to go on to Stafford (Springs Motor Speedway) and see if we can get an MRS win."

Savary's hard charge netted him a sixth place finish. "Because we had to start towards the back, our strategy was to ride and stay in the back saving the tires. A couple of drivers at mid-pack were running side-by-side conserving their equipment and I was disappointed with the officiating that allowed those people to ride like that for so many laps, which eventually led to the incident I was involved in with three or four other cars. After a tire change, I started in the rear and luckily I picked the right lane and took a car at a time, until I was 10th and I started to wait for a yellow so we could change the right rear, but yellow never came and I went back on aggressive mode and started passing again. Today we had a good car and maybe I could have had a better finish, if I didn't conserve so much at midpoint of the race, but we're still good with a sixth place."

Another driver who needed a caution flag for a tire change was Mike Douglas, Jr., but that cautioned never came and Douglas finished 15th. "I never thought we'd go as green as long as we did here, it's hard to say, maybe I was driving 60% throttle and dad (crew chief) said if you want to go- go. I was actually getting bored running where I was so I decided to go. I got to third for some lap money, but I guess I used up the tires at that point, but I enjoyed running flat out and what you got is what you've got at the end."

Order of finish.

1-5CT- Chris Pasteryak

2-12- Todd Annarummo

3-42- Woody Pitkat

4-70- Andy Seuss

5-92- Anthony Nocella

6-99- Richard Savary

7-53- Norm Wrenn

8-85- Todd Szegedy

9-05- Todd Patnode

10-6- Ryan Preece

11-22- Rowan Pennink

12-29- Brendon Bock

13-28- Dwight Jarvis

14-3- Steve Masse

15-23- Mike Douglas, Jr.

16-27 Andy Jankowiak

17-76- Zane Zeiner

18-16- Jon McKennedy

19-43- Kirk Alexander

20- Doug Coby.

21-79nh-Garrison Grubisa

22-36- Dave Sapienza

23-7ma-Kurt Vigeant

24-50ma-Carl MedeirosJr.

25-79- Spencer Davis

26-6ma-Dennis Perry

27-41- Dan McKeage

28-50- Matt Hirschman

Heat winners: Pitkat, Masse, Preece, Vigeant

Conci winners: Sapienza, Perry

'B' Main winner: Patnode

Promoter's choice: McKeage

Total time- 39:04.026

Margin of victory- 0.821.

Best lap time- 14.847.

Best speed- 90.927

Best lap by- 13- Steve Masse

story by Jim Snape

photos by Crystal Snape