Winners Survive Crash Filled Night at Buxton

Chatham’s Brad Authier felt like a winner on ‘Survivor’ after winning Saturday night’s Glencoe Auto Recyclers UMP Late Model feature race.

He survived a first-lap incident with last week’s feature winner Gregg Haskell, in what Authier called “a racing incident,” and later was able to drive away from separate incidents with brothers Dale and Mark Glassford to earn his first feature win since last year’s season championship race victory.

“I think I’ll call one of them (Glassford brothers) this week, we need to call a truce,” said Authier said after the wild 20-lap feature.

“We’ve only got eight cars out here, we don’t need to be wrecking the whole field.”

Chatham’s Jim Jones avoided the mayhem to finish second followed by Dale and Mark, the latter who was a lap down in fourth.

Haskell never returned from the first-lap crash and finished eighth.

Authier also won the heat and dash for a clean sweep of the three Late Models’ races.

While the other three features lacked the physicality of the Late Models, all three exciting came down to climatic last-lap finishes.

Shrewsbury’s Jim Dale Jr. led all 20 laps but had his hands full holding off Merlin’s Joe Brosseau for his second Schinkels Gourmet Meats UMP Modified feature of the season.

Leamington’s Joel Dick, who won the last two Saturday nights, finished third.

Chatham driver’s Eric Vanderiviere and Darryl Hoekstra rounded out the top five.

Essex’s Patrick Lajeunesse also led all 20 caps to win his first Windride Transportation Sport Stocks feature, withstanding a strong challenge from points leader and back-to-back feature winner Eren Vanderiviere of Merlin.

Grande Pointe’s Tyler Lozon, Kingsville’s Rob Young and Chatham’s Jason Fox rounded out the top five.

Lajeunesse also won the heat race.

The Tirecraft Comp 4s feature came down to another showdown between the division’s top two drivers, with Cottam’s Denis DeSerrano winning for a second straight and Blenheim’s Shawn Jones finishing second.

The two drivers have combined to win all 19 features since the start of the 2011 season, with Jones winning 12 times and DeSerrano seven.

Cottam’s Rob Quick was third, followed by 14-year-old Trevor Jones of Blenheim and Tilbury’s James Beaulieu.

Six drivers won their first checkered flags of the season – Chatham’s Randy McKinlay and Merlin’s Steve Shaw Jr. In the Comp 4 heats and Chatham’s Rick Balasin in the Comp 4 crack-the-whip; Wallaceburg’s Willy Vyse in the Sport Stocks’ dash along with Lajeunesse’s wins; and Eric Vanderiviere in the Modified heat.

One week after the four feature races were slowed by 21 cautions, there were only 10 on Saturday – two of those for debris – as the swift-paced program was completed by 9:25 p.m.