Charlotte, NC 7/16/12– After dodging rain showers during the day’s practice session luck finally ran out on PASS South Series officials as showers came and washed out the afternoon’s qualifying session. This set up a rare occurrence for PASS South competitors to take the green based on current series points standings, and scraped the normal redraw of the top ten qualifiers to take the green flag. This put leader Brandon Ward on the pole with second place man Kyle Grissom to his outside for the initial start. Ward picked up right where he left off at Anderson two weeks earlier taking command of the lead on lap one. While it was Ward who took the lead young John Hunter Nemechek, son of NASCAR driver Joe Nemechek, was the car on the move through the first portion of the 150 lap event. The fourteen year old driver making his PASS South super late model debut picked up five positions moving from thirteenth to eighth in just the first twelve circuits around to high banked Virginia track.

Ward lead the next fifty-four laps with Grissom glued to his bumper often making contact with his #62 machine through the tight turns. Finally with the pair hitting lap traffic Grissom gave the nudge to the two time winner Ward and then ducked to the bottom to take the lead. Grissom spent the next eighty laps opening a straightaway lead over the rest of the field picking his way through lapped traffic. Ross Kenseth who has struggled as of late looked to be on his way back to the top five finishing order when smoke began to puff from the rear of his Blain’s Farm & Fleet machine through the turns beginning on lap sixty-one while running fourth. The problem then went from bad to worse as he was forced off the pace several laps later and then went slipping through the field before eventually finishing in the seventh position.

As the lap counter hit triple digits Grissom looked to be on his way to another win as the field stayed clean and green allowing his lead to grow with each passing lap. Finally on lap 104 a fading Brandon Ward forced several drivers doing all they could to get around him for the fifth place position to check up hard. The result was a blown tire for John Hunter Nemechek that sent him hard into the outside wall coming out of turn four ending the streak of green flag racing. The yellow wiped away Grissom’s lead and put both Fogleman and Peltier on his rear bumper battling for the lead as the field resumed green flag racing.

That was all that Jay needed to put his machine on the apron of the turn at the Motor Mile Speedway where no one else could which lead to the Durham, North Carolina driver taking over the lead on lap 136. Veteran Preston Peltier made things interesting in the closing laps after following Fogleman’s pass around Grissom moving from third to second, and attempting on several occasions to take his #26 Johnson Motorsports owned machine to the high side for the win before settling for the runner up spot. Grissom held on for a solid third place finish that was good enough for the super late model rookie to regain the championship points over fellow contender Brandon Ward.

Next up for the “BIG BOYS WITH THE BAD FASTTOYS” PASS South Super Late Model Series will be the return to the always popular Orange County Speedway located in Rougemont, North Carolina for the Southern Sizzler 150 on Saturday night July 28th. For more information on the PASS South Series or any of the PASS sanctioned series visit www.proallstarsseries.com.

PASS South-Motor Mile 150

Motor Mile Speedway-Radford, Virginia

Official Results

1)      #4 Jay Fogleman

2)      #26 Preston Peltier

3)      #31 Kyle Grissom

4)      #29 Landon Cling

5)      #2 Gray Gaulding

6)      #19 Nate Caruth

7)      #25 Ross Kenseth

8)      #62 Brandon Ward

9)      #70 Steven Burgh Jr.

10)   #18 Bill Catania

11)  #12 Scott Hensley

12)  #48 John Batten

13)  #8 John Hunter Nemechek

14)   #42 Tim Pinion