RANSOMVILLE, NY – Erick Rudolph of Ransomville remained perfect in the Krown Undercoating 358 Modifieds as he picked up his second win to start the season. Pete Stefanski of Wheatfield, N.Y. scored his first Ki-Po Chevrolet Street Stock feature. Dante Mancuso of Batavia won the Gippster’s Collision Mini Stock feature. Butch Zimmerman of Burt, N.Y. won his second Stevenson’s Hardware Novice Sportsman feature of 2019.
A strong field of 24 Krown Undercoating 358 Modifieds were on hand for just their second race of the 2019 season at Ransomville. Jeff McGinnis and Rick Richner started on the front row, while Erick Rudolph had to start 12th due to Ransomville’s lineup procedures. As the winner of the most recent feature in the division, Rudolph had to start at the end of the cars that qualified for the redraw.
McGinnis grabbed the early lead, but handed it off to Ryan Susice after a restart on lap 3. Rudolph wasted little time as he moved from seventh place on lap 3 to third place just three laps later. The red flag was displayed on lap 6 when Tyler Willard rolled his car over after making impact with the wall in turn one. He walked away from the incident.
The race then went on a long green flag run with Susice leading Mat Williamson and Rudolph. Williamson and Rudolph ran side-by-side for several laps as they contested the runner up position. Susice tried to pull away from the battle between Williamson and Rudolph, but lapped traffic made that difficult.
The trio remained close together on the track as Rudolph finally wrestled second away from Williamson on lap 18. He then tracked down Susice, and made a run underneath him coming out of turn two on lap 24 to take the lead for the first time. Susice tried to regain the spot at the other end of the track, but he hopped the cushion in turn three and scraped the wall.
Rudolph survived a late race restart when Steve Lewis, Jr. brought out the caution with four laps to go. He drove on to pick up his second-straight Ransomville win, and did it in front of his sponsor Blue Cross Blue Shield of WNY. Susice and Williams completed the podium with Chad Brachmann in fourth and Mike Bowman in fifth .
RESULTS
KROWN UNDERCOATING 358 MODIFIEDS
Heat Winners: Chad Brachmann, Erick Rudolph. Jeff McGinnis
Feature: 1. 25-Erick Rudolph, [12]; 2. 38-Ryan Susice, [4]; 3. 6-Mat Williamson, [8]; 4. 3-Chad Brachmann, [6]; 5. 71-Mike Bowman, [9]; 6. 42-Pete Bicknell, [11]; 7. 20-Jeff McGinnis, [1]; 8. 7F-Matt Farnham, [18]; 9. 26-Rich Richner, [2]; 10. 111-Allan Wills, [3]; 11. 47V-Phil Vigneri III, [5]; 12. 37S-Tommy Flannigan, [21]; 13. 18-Andy Jankowiak, [23]; 14. 6M-Mike Williams, [7]; 15. 55C-Jesse Cotriss, [15]; 16. 12J-Nick Joy, [20]; 17. 678-John Smith, [17]; 18. 11S-Steven Lewis Jr, [22]; 19. 42S-Andrew Spurback, [19]; 20. 132-Brandon Michaud, [16]; 21. 28Z-Gary Lindberg, [10]; 22. 27-Jim Zimmerman, [24]; 23. 777-Tyler Willard, [13]; 24. 4-Greg Martin, [14]