Brandon Overton shakes off contact, wins 2nd Firecracker 100 at Lernerville

Brandon Overton won his second Firecracker 100 on Saturday at Lernerville Speedway, but he had to overcome a close call to do so.

While under caution on lap 51, Brent Larson came out of the infield work area and while driving by the field to assume his spot at the back of order, he clipped the front of Overton’s car.

At first, Overton thought he had a flat tire, but after feeling the car out, he resumed his spot at the front of the pack, and once the race restarted, he set sail to a $30,000 pay day in the 15th annual Firecracker 100.

“I guess if you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything,” Overton said about the incident with Larson. “It could’ve potentially cost me $30,000, and that’s not cool. I know he didn’t mean to do it on purpose, but the caution was out. You shouldn’t be flying around the damn race track when everyone is going 10 miles per hour.”

Overton said he made contact with someone on the first lap and wasn’t sure if something was bent on the car, but once he made contact with Larson, he knew something was bent.

Once the race resumed, though, he took off and pulled away for victory.

“These things aren’t tanks, so it only takes a little bit to knock something out,” Overton said. “Who knows, though? Maybe it bent it the right way. I just got lucky. Probably 10 laps after I calmed myself down from that (incident), I don’t know if it was the tires coming back in or what, but once I felt that, I knew I had to just keep myself calm and do what I was doing.

“This is a really tricky place. It’s so technical. If you enter into the corner too hard, you will slide a mile. It really takes a lot of focus. You have to pay attention to what you are doing.”

Overton, who also won the Firecracker 100 in 2017, started fifth and moved to third within the first 10 laps. He passed Brandon Sheppard on a lap 22 restart for second and eventually worked his way past Chris Madden 18 laps later.

Madden, who led the first 40 laps, placed second. Dennis Erb, Jr. was third, 21st-starting Darrell Lanigan was fourth, and Sheppard, who won Thursday’s preliminary feature, was fifth.

Michael Norris of Sarver was the top local finisher in seventh. It was his third consecutive top 10 in the Firecracker 100. Other Lernerville regulars that made the feature were Colton Flinner (17th), Jared Miley (21st) and Alex Ferree (28th).

The win capped off a sensational June in which Overton has pocketed $319,000. He won a pair of Dream races at Eldora (Ohio) to go along with the preliminary victory he had Friday at Lernerville and the Firecracker 100.

“I really can’t believe I’ve won this much in the last little bit here,” Overton said. “It’s crazy to think about. There was a time when I just wanted to win one cardboard check. That’s it. Just one. Now I’ve exceeded those expectations. We’ll just try to keep getting all we can get. I grew up watching guys do the same thing, so now I know a little about how they feel.”

The race was slowed by four cautions but went green for the final 44 laps.

Sheppard won heat one from the pole. Zeigler got the jump on Norris from the outside pole and went on to win heat two. Madden started first and won heat three. Overton started on the pole and cruised to a win in heat four. Cade Dillard beat Chub Frank into turn one from the outside pole and set sail to win heat five.

Lanigan won the first last-chance showdown, and Dan Stone edged Ross Robinson by .0025 seconds to finish second and transfer into the Firecracker 100. Gregg Satterlee won the second last-chance showdown, and Boom Briggs finished second to transfer.

Mike Benedum won the Uncle Sam 30 non-qualifiers race and in lieu of taking the $2,000 first-place check, he elected to tag the back of the Firecracker 100. He ended up pulling pitside 20 laps into the race and placed 29th.

Mark Whitener won the 50-lap $10,000-to-win RUSH Crate Series feature.