Night Of Firsts At South Buxton Raceway

Rick Balasin waited 12 years to get to Victory Lane.

It took Jake Hooker just 12 months.

Two Chatham drivers posted their first career feature wins at South Buxton Raceway in front of a huge crowd Saturday night.

The 48-year-old Balasin took the lead on the second lap of the Tirecraft Mini-Mods feature while the 14-year-old Hooker, in just his second year of racing, led all 20 laps for his first Tirecraft Sport Stocks points-race feature victory.

“We’ve come close, a few seconds and thirds, but never a feature win in my 12 years,” Balasin said.

He took the lead from Tilbury’s Gerry Rivait on the second lap and held off Blenheim’s Kyle Hope the rest of the way.

“I was thinking, ‘when is the white (flag) coming out?’ ” Balasin said about what was going through his mind as the laps wound down.

“When I saw the white, I wanted to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes and it felt pretty good when I saw the checkered,” he said.

Balasin started in the Sport Stocks class before moving to the Mini-Mods five years ago.

He finished fourth in points in 2011, sharing the ride with Jamie St. Pierre. He finished seventh in points in 2012, fifth in ’13 and slipped to 11th last year.

He won six checkereds over the last two seasons including a ‘B’ Main.

“It was a little frustrating,” Balasin said about going 12 years without a feature win.

“But you just keep working at it.

“I’d like to thank my wife (Linda) for all she’s put up with to let me do this (racing),” he said, with a smile.

Chatham’s Darryl Lucio recovered from a first-lap accident to finish third.

The race was red-flagged for a serious accident on the second attempt at the original green when Kingsville’s Larry Hart’s car was sent airborne and flipped twice before landing on its wheels after a collision with Essex’s Tom Reimer.

The track’s safety crew had to cut through the mangled roll cage to extricate Hart, who was transported to Chatham hospital and released with minor injuries.

Hooker survived nine restarts in the caution-plagued Sport Stocks feature for his first career feature win.

The Chatham teen is no stranger to Victory Lane, as he won the Sport Stocks ‘A’ Main in last September’s Canadian Fall Shootout.

“No, I never thought it would come so fast,” Hooker said of his quick success.

He spent the first half of his rookie season getting use to the weight and handle of a stock car after racing since a youngster in go-karts. He finished 14th in points with one heat-race win.

Hooker put his go-cart skills to use on a dry-slick track to hold off the veteran Rob Young of Kingsville for all 20 laps of Saturday’s feature.

“Rob Young has always treated me well, it was good, clean racing,” Hooker said, as the two made no contact despite the numerous restarts.

“The other guys have all been nice to me, because I’m so young,” said Hooker, who doesn’t turn 15 until August.

He spoke like a veteran when asked how all of the cautions and lack of green-flag racing affected his driving.

“The positive of all of the cautions, I could play with the brake adjuster to set the brakes up to see what the track was like and what the car could do,” he said.

“I was just trying to hit my marks, keep it on the bottom because that’s where most of the moisture was.

“That’s pretty crazy, I never thought I’d do this tonight,” he said of his win.

“There are a lot of fast cars here.”

Chatham’s Eric Vanderiviere, Merlin’s Steve Shaw and Ruthven’s Brad Bloomfield rounded out the top

The father-son duo of Dale and Nick Glassford, from Ridgetown, won their features for the second straight race night.

Dale, 45, took the lead with four laps to go in the Westside Performance Plus UMP Late Model feature while Nick, 15, led all 15 laps of the Autotech Bomber feature.

Both drivers also won their heat races.

“We better keep riding the wave, things are falling our way, right now,” said Dale Glassford, the 2013 Late Model champion.

Glassford, who started sixth, took second from Chatham’s Gregg Haskell on lap 13 and four laps later went to the bottom to take the lead from Chatham’s Erick Walker.

“It was just perfect timing,” he said. “Sometimes you wait all night for the holes to open and they never do, tonight they opened at the right time for me.”

Walker and Haskell finished second and third, followed by Chatham’s Brad Authier and Jim Jones.

Nick Glassford started on the front row and not only had to battle the competition but dusty track conditions as well.

“You always had to look ahead and be ready, especially going into the corners because if there was a car turned around, you had to be ready to react,” he said.

Kingsville’s Jason Kelly ran second for the entire 15 laps, his second straight runner-up finish, with Merlin’s Bill Featherstone, Chatham’s Chris Ellerbeck and Blenheim’s Austin Pickering rounding out the top five.

Leamington’s Joel Dick survived a wreck-fest to win his first Schinkels Gourmet Meats UMP Modifieds feature race of the young season.

Dick took the lead two laps after dodging a multi-car wreck on the back stretch and led the final 16 laps to win the.

Clayton Smith, of Taylor, Mich., finished second, followed by Merlin’s Jeff Daniel, Tupperville’s Drew Smith and Belle River’s Mario Toniolo.