SARVER, PA -With a sweltering summer night surrounding The Action Track, a different kind of Fab4 racing returned on Friday night as visits from the BRP Modified Tour and the Elite Motorsports UEMS Emod Racing Series highlighted the evening’s racing card with the Peoples Natural Gas Sprint cars and Millerstown Pic-A-Part Pro Stocks also on the menu, continuing their weekly racing seasons. Over 90 cars graced the pits on Friday, yielding four features worth of cars that put on an entertaining night of racing for the crowd on hand.
Erick Rudolph made the four hour haul from Ransomville, NY and for the second time in 2024, made the haul worthwhile as he put on a clinic in the 35 lap BRP Modified main event, winning by over a four second margin, while another invader took the honors in the Peoples Sprint Cars feature as Mark Smith ventured from Central, PA to take the feature win. Veteran Pilot Troy Johnson took home a very popular and hard earned win in UEMS Emod action and Chris Schneider made it four wins total in the 2024 season, garnering yet another feature win by holding off Christian Schneider in the waning laps.
Rudolph Cruises in BRP Main Event
Erick Rudolph has authored wins from Quebec to Florida in his career up to date. But perhaps his best work has come in the Pennsylvania-Ohio territories where his stats go from very good to amazing. Rudolph came into Friday night’s BRP Mod Tour Event sporting a 50 plus percent win rate with 31 wins in 59 career starts and combined with occasional weekly visits and other special events, his win total in the twin-state area now tops 35 feature wins in limited action over the past few years.
Rudolph started fifth on the grid of the 24 car field in the 35-lap main event on Friday night, alongside track points leader Garrett Krummert and just ahead of former and three time track champion Rex King Jr. Up front, eight time track champion and DIRTcar Hall of Famer Brian Swartzlander made his return to The Action Track in a car owned by Sprint Car veteran pilot driver Bill Rose, adding a layer of intrigue to the $3,000-to-win main event. Swartzlander started on the pole alongside Jordan Ehrenberg and when the green flag waved Swartzlander assumed command of the field with Eherenberg and Ayden Cipriano in tow. Cipriano didn’t stay back in third for long however as he managed to make his way past both Ehrenberg and Swartzlander coming out of turn four with three laps in the books. Just one lap later, Rudolph had made his way past Eherenberg and Swartzlander and the battle for the lead was on.Cipriano kept a blistering pace out front as he held a half second advantage over Rudolph with seven laps down. Behind the action up front, Krummert and King were making their charges from their starting positions to the third and fourth spots respectively as the 10 lap mark approached, looking to both run down Cipriano and Rudolph up front. Then with lapped traffic in front of the leaders, Rudolph patiendly picked his moment as he moved to the bottom groove of the speedway. Cipriano’s car then began billowing smoke as he desperately clung to a slim lead with 15 laps in the books when Rudolph powered his way past the leader coming off the bottom of turn two while Cipriano’s car sent more smoke behind it. Rudolph then went straight to work in lapped traffic, making his way around one piece of it after another while putting car lengths between himself and Cipirano and company. With 14 laps remaining, Cipriano’s car fell off the pace significantly allowing Krummert, King and Jeremiah Shingledecker to pass while Rudolph had accumulated a 4.7 second lead which he mostly maintained over the course of the final laps as King and Krummert rounded out the podium.
“When I first went out there I saw how high the top was and it looked like it would be there for us tonight,” Rudolph remarked. “I contemplated running the middle bottom and very bottom. I was kind of gauging myself off of the five car (Ciprano) and I seemed to reel him in a bit and then he started smoking.”
“I would have loved a caution,” King said. “The track was really racy. We would have liked to have had a yellow so we could have run up front and see if we had something for Erick. He was really good. I felt like I was catching him when he was in lapped traffic and I wasn’t great but we had a lot of fun coming from eighth up to second.”
“I still don’t think we had anything for Erick,” Krummert said. “He probably would have raced a little harder if the caution came out. It’s a third, we’ll take it and try to get a little bit better. “
Diehl Automotive Feature: (Finish-Name-[Start]) 1. 25-Erick Rudolph[5]; 2. 165-Rex King Jr[8]; 3. 29-Garrett Krummert[6]; 4. 37MD-Jeremiah Shingledecker[7]; 5. 9-Will Thomas[11]; 6. 3RS-Dalton Slack[16]; 7. JD57-Jordan Ehrenberg[2]; 8. 5C-Ayden Cipriano[3]; 9. 18-Colton Walters[4]; 10. 45-Steve Feder[10]; 11. 14S-Justin Shea[12]; 12. 13-Rick Regalski Jr[14]; 13. 11R-Brad Rapp[18]; 14. 777-Tyler Willard[20]; 15. 66F-Kyle Fink[15]; 16. 61-Dave Murdick[24]; 17. 18JR-Mike Dougherty Jr[17]; 18. 25B-Steve Barr[21]; 19. 75-Jeff Miller[23]; 20. 9R-Chad Reitz[22]; 21. 20P-Mike Kinney[9]; 22. 5A-Austin Eyler[13]; 23. (DNF) 6X-Brian Swartzlander[1]; 24. (DNF) 6-Lenny Leibold[19]