Friday night’s contest at Benton Speedway was Joe B. Miller’s first race on the American Sprint Car Series National Tour in over a year. He didn’t take long to get reacclimated.
The Millersville, MO driver took the checkered flag in the first Series appearance at his home track of Benton Speedway since 1996 for his second National Tour victory alongside a score at Lake Ozark Speedway on May 27, 2023.
“Our shop’s about 30 minutes from here, so it’s about as close to home as we’re going to get,” Miller said in Victory Lane. “Got a lot of friends and family in the stands and this means a lot to get a National win.”
Miller shared the front row in the Feature with Tempe, AZ’s Sterling Cling, who was also making his first National Tour start of the season. In Cling’s case, it was also his debut with the Series as he winds down his first full season as a winged Sprint Car driver following years of Non-Wing competition.
Cling rode the high lane to pull away from Miller after one lap while Sam Hafertepe Jr. drove from tenth to third in the opening circuit as he looked to gain ground on Seth Bergman in the points chase.
Miller moved up to the top to match Cling and rode behind him through the first portion of the race until Lap 8. He sent his No. 51B machine to the bottom in Turn 1, slid up next to Cling and forced him into the loose dirt at the top of the track while Miller drove away to the lead.
Cling was soon under fire from Hafertepe for the second spot, but just as soon as Hafertepe made the pass on Lap 11, he got into the side of the slower car of Kelsey Ivy and spun. He kept the car rolling and rejoined the field, but not before Cling got back by.
The running order remained unchanged in the second half of the race up until Hank Davis looked to Hafertepe’s outside for third in Turns 3 and 4 coming to the white flag. Before Davis was able to sneak by, Hafertepe moved up the track and contacted Davis’s left-rear tire, sending Hafertepe’s car into the air, upside down and out of the race. The crash and subsequent 18th-place finish places Hafertepe 136 points behind Bergman in the standings entering Paducah International Raceway on Saturday night.
On the green-white-checkered restart that followed, Miller once again drove away and led Cling by 1.4 seconds when the checkered flag flew.
Given his home track advantage, Miller has plenty of experience navigating slower traffic efficiently at Benton. That skill turned out to be his key to victory over the numerous drivers making their Benton debut thanks to the long green flag run in the middle of the race.
“I thought I was making really good time through the lap cars,” Miller said. “I just tried catching that little bit of grip down there right by the tires and kind of slid myself. I didn’t know if I should have been up higher, but I just felt like if I could have kept plucking off lap cars then surely we’d have a few between me and second.”
For Cling, his runner-up effort was his career-best finish with a national winged Sprint Car series, solidifying his status as a rising star in the division.
“It’s pretty cool,” Cling said. “I haven’t really raced with any of these guys all year, we’ve been 410 racing a little bit of everywhere. Didn’t really know what to expect when we showed up here. Nonetheless, Mike, he always gives me a great car and works as hard as he possibly can, harder than anybody else in these pits. I’ve just got to thank him for continuing to work with me, and we’ll just keep building.”
Davis emerged from the contact with two to go in the third spot and held off Jason Martin on the final restart, netting him the final spot on the podium along with the Hard Charger Award after his drive up from 12th.
“He was going to slide a lapper, he kind of got trapped behind him and left the door open, so I took it,” Davis said on the incident with Hafertepe. “That was about all there was to it.”
Martin settled for fourth while Landon Britt came home fifth for his first top five since Big Sky Speedway on Aug. 23.
UP NEXT: The ASCS National Tour will make the 90-minute drive east to Kentucky’s Paducah International Raceway for the second half of this weekend’s doubleheader. Tickets will be available at the track, but if you can’t make it, watch every lap live on DIRTVision.
Feature (30 Laps): 1. 51B-Joe B Miller[1]; 2. 34-Sterling Cling[2]; 3. 2C-Hank Davis[12]; 4. 36-Jason Martin[4]; 5. 10-Landon Britt[3]; 6. 15D-Andrew Deal[5]; 7. 23-Seth Bergman[9]; 8. 95-Matt Covington[7]; 9. 22-Riley Goodno[6]; 10. 16G-Austyn Gossel[8]; 11. 41-Colton Hardy[17]; 12. 2J-Zach Blurton[18]; 13. 45X-Kyler Johnson[14]; 14. 938-Bradley Fezard[19]; 15. 88-Terry Easum[13]; 16. 99D-Tucker Daly[15]; 17. 52D-Skyler Daly[11]; 18. 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr[10]; 19. 21-Gunner Ramey[16]; 20. 122-Lane Warner[21]; 21. 20I-Kelsey Ivy[20]; 22. 7D-Dylan DeJournett[22]
