8.31.19 Pennsylvania Sprint Series Results
By: Frank Buhrman and Stephanie Stevens Dodson
Lebanon’s Devin Adams scored his third victory of the year Saturday night in the PA Sprint Series 20-lap feature at BAPS Motor Speedway.
The win continues a dream sophomore season for the 18-year-old Adams, who has now finished in the top five in half of the 20 PASS/IMCA RaceSaver sprint races he has run, after having a best finish of 13th in eight starts in his rookie year of 2018. He now owns victories at BAPS, Port Royal and Selinsgrove Speedways.
On Saturday, he drew the outside front row starting spot for the feature after finishing second in his heat. After the initial start was nullified by a tangle involving Keith Prutzman and Dave Grube (both of whom continued in the race), Adams outran fellow teenaged front-row starter Jake Frye for the lead and was only challenged in the final laps when runner-up Christian Rumsey nearly caught him in traffic. In the end, Adams won over Rumsey by .119 seconds.
Rumsey had slipped past Frye on the third lap, and several other drivers made their moves early, when a slippery surface – dramatically different from that of the heat races – required they use both throttle and brake to maintain traction. During those early laps, Larry McVay moved up five spots into fifth, and Doug Dodson advanced three places to sixth. By the midway point, Dominic Melair also had caught Frye and moved into third.
The last six laps saw Rumsey close in traffic, only to have Adams successfully put a lapped car between the leaders, enabling him to stretch his lead. On the last lap, though, it was Adams who was held up, and Rumsey caught the leader but couldn’t make the pass.
That put Adams’ Fredericksburg Eagle Hotel/Adams Auto Sales/Garden Spot Auto Auction #99A back in the winner’s circle.
“I knew that someone was coming, because it took me a little longer than I wanted to get around the lapped traffic,” Adams said in Victory Lane. “I knew that someone was going to be there.”
Rumsey, Melair and Frye joined to make up a youth movement at the front. Rumsey only turned 21 a little more than a week ago; Melair is the relative graybeard with his 26th birthday coming up next week, and Frye was the youngest driver in the field, having just turned 17 on Friday.
Fifth-place finisher McVay is in a different age bracket: his daughter Marie also races.
Rounding out the Top 10 Saturday were Dodson, Billy Ney, John Walp, Zach Newlin and Nick Sweigart. Walp was the evening’s hard charger, advancing six positions from his 14th starting spot.
Heat races for the 18 cars on hand were won by Prutzman and Jay Krout. In the first heat, experience won out over age when Prutzman, the oldest driver in the field at 62, outdueled Frye in a race-long battle.
The race did not offer RaceSaver points due to the Eagle Nationals event being held in Nebraska. As a result, there was a relaxed atmosphere in the pits, with drivers experimenting with set-ups.
“Nitro Nick” Sweigart’s #8 carried pink wings on his car as part of Racer X Motorsports’ support for Help the Fight, a charitable organization that provides monetary support for people in Lancaster County and the surrounding area who are fighting breast cancer or needing screening for the disease. Help the Fight was on hand to collect donations and sell merchandise.
PASS moves into the homestretch of the 2019 season next week with its final race of the season at Path Valley Speedway Park, where the sprinters will join the wingless super sportsman cars, 270 and 600cc micro-sprints, 4-cylinder thunder cars and 4-cylinder strictly stocks. Warm-ups begin at 7:00 p.m.
That race begins a stretch of eight races on seven different tracks, including one interregional RaceSaver race and two co-sanctions. The schedule at www.pasprintseries.com has more details.
Results from BAPS Motor Speedway Saturday, August 31, 2019
HEAT 1 – 1. 28-Keith Prutzman; 2 56-Jake Frye; 3. 83-Billy Ney; 4. 1R-Christian Rumsey; 5. 20-Doug Dodson; 6. 8-Nick Sweigart; 7. 11Z-Zach Newlin; 8. 51-Dave Graber; 9. 69-Landon Price.
HEAT 2 – 1. 50-Jay Krout; 2. 99A-Devin Adams; 3. 3D-Dave Grube; 4. 55-Dominic Melair; 5. 83L-Larry McVay; 6. 2-Erin Statler; 7. 5-John Walp; 8. 11-Dylan Smith; 9. 44K-Kirsten Hess.
FEAURE – 1. 99A-Devin Adams; 2. 1R-Christian Rumsey; 3. 55-Domenic Melair; 4. 56-Jake Frye; 5. 83L-Larry McVay; 6. 20-Doug Dodson; 7. 83-Billy Ney; 8. 5-John Walp; 9. 11Z-Zach Newlin; 10. 8-Nick Sweigart; 11. 50-Jay Krout; 12. 3D-Dave Grube; 13. 2-Erin Statler; 14. 28-Keith Prutzman; 15. 11-Dylan Smith; 16. 44K-Kirsten Hess; 17. 69-Landon Price; 18. 51-Dave Graber.