ALLSTAR: Port Royal summary

Hodnett Capitalizes on Esh's Misfortune at Port Royal

PORT ROYAL, PA (6-14-07) The O'Reillly All Star Circuit of Champions returned to Port Royal Speedway for the Bob Weikert Memorial event that was rained out in May. There were 41 cars and stars on hand to compete for the $5000 top prize in honor of the respected Central PA car owner. Kenny Jacobs rolled out a special paint scheme for this event as he piloted the white #29 Weikert Livestock machine owned by Barry Jackson. It looked as if the Mouse had help from above as he set quick time, won his heat, then won the All Star Dash. In victory lane for the dash he said that "Bob Weikert once told me when I used to drive for him that you can only do three things right in one night. You can't do four." That would hold true as Jacobs had a tire go down on lap 12 while charging to the front in the A-main.

Doug Esh was the car to beat in the feature event as he took the lead on the initial green flag, however several early cautions slowed the event and gave Greg Hodnett the opportunity to challenge Esh on the restarts, but Esh would pull away each time and looked like a sure winner with just 3 laps to go in the 30 lap event, but then his luck ran out as he cut a tire and spun in turn three, nearly getting upside down.

On the restart, Greg Hodnett with twelve All Star wins already to his credit took full advantage of Esh's misfortune and drove a clean 3 laps to the checkered flag with Fred Rahmer (from his 16th starting spot), Kevin Nouse, Greg Wilson (who started 14th), and Keith Kauffman (who started 15th) rounding out the Top Five.

"Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good," said Hodnett from victory lane. "Don't get me wrong. The guys did a great job with the car tonight and it put us in a position to take advantage of the misfortune of others. We had a decent qualifying spot that put us up toward the front and I stayed out of trouble and kept plugging along and it worked into our favor."

Hodnett tried on several restarts to get under Esh and put a slide job on him going into turn two, but Esh powered away each time off the top. "I saw his tire was low on restarts and figured my best chance was to run up in there and hope he'd make a mistake, but he didn't and it was unfortunate that he had tire problems." said Hodnett. "We were fortunate to hold on and to be standing up here tonight."

Heat races were won by Kenny Jacobs, Lucas Wolfe, Fred Rahmer, and Danny Smith. Kenny Jacobs won the All Star Dash. The B-main was won by Mike Erdley.

The O'Reilly All Stars continue their trek through Central PA on Friday June 15th at Williams Grove Speedway and then continue on to Lincoln Speedway on Saturday June 16th.

PRE-RACE NOTES:
41 cars in the pits this evening. Mark Smith scratched for the evening after hot laps.

-credit: allstarsprint.com