Deac McCaskill Earns ‘Unbelievable’ CARS Tour Win at Langley Speedway
HAMPTON, VA (June 10, 2019) – Sometimes racers say it is better to be lucky than good, and Deac McCaskill was both on Saturday night at Larry King Law’s Langley Speedway. A last-lap tangle between the leaders opened the door for the former CARS Late Model Stock Tour champion to claim his first win of the season and break a 14-month winless drought in the WhosYourDriver.org 125.
Layne Riggs rocketed around Langley’s .395-mile layout in qualifying to claim the Hedgecock Racing Pole Position, establishing a tour track record in the process. He led the first two laps until Justin T. Carroll made a daring three-wide maneuver on lap 3 to snag the lead from Riggs and Bobby McCarty.
A series of early cautions allowed Carroll and others to save their tires, and the pattern continued throughout the race with misfortunes occurring approximately every 20 laps, creating a series of short runs for drivers throughout the night.
On lap 80, Bobby McCarty had enough of Carroll’s dominance and tracked him down for the race lead. After applying a small dose of front bumper, McCarty opened the bottom lane and drove through to set the pace, officially leading lap 81 onward until late in the race.
Brandon Pierce, driving a backup car for Tommy Lemons, Jr., after a practice crash wiped his primary machine out, spun in turn two with only a pair of laps remaining, necessitating a green-white-checkered restart.
McCarty and Riggs restarted on the front row, with Riggs nearly matching every move of the No. 22 for the first lap. After taking the white flag, Riggs slid behind McCarty and moved him off the bottom groove, stealing the top spot as the field exited turn two. Not to be outdone, McCarty repaid the favor even harder in turn three, turning Riggs sideways in front of the entire field. While everyone else slowed to avoid a massive accident, Deac McCaskill took advantage of his inside positioning to drive past the chaos and into Edelbrock Victory Lane in only his second career visit to the facility.
McCarty crossed the line second, followed by his teammate Sammy Smith, and Adam Lemke. Riggs miraculously recovered from his half-spin to finish fifth.
“Unbelievable, man!,” winner McCaskill exclaimed in Edelbrock Victory Lane. “I was just kind of content with third place, you know. We had just charged back from tenth and the caution came out. You know, God always has a plan and I stuck with it, believed in it, trusted in His faith, and we’re standing here in victory lane, man. It’s unbelievable. My wife’s at home watching, and we’ll try to keep this together for all of them.”
McCaskill’s wife, Sandy, suffered two strokes in the offseason and has made it to a handful of races this year as she continues her recovery.
“We just charged through the field and got to position ourselves there, and we were really good on long runs,” he continued. “I didn’t think I had anything for Bobby, I thought I could get by Layne but I knew it’d be tough. It’s just not over, man. It’s the way these CARS Tour rules are. I hate it for Bobby, but what a class act to walk up here and congratulate me. That’s pretty special.”
McCaskill then began to reflect on his career, a storied one, and how racing in the CARS Tour guarantees him nothing in the way of success.
“You know, I was thinking this week, I’m 41 years old,” he said. “You never know when your last win is going to happen. I know it’s been since last April. My daughter’s been giving me a fit, ‘Dad, it’s been April since you last won a race,’ I just can’t believe we’re standing here in victory lane at Langley Speedway. I’m going to be glad to get home and celebrate with my daughter. This is pretty dang special. We crossed the line and I was like, ‘Did we just win this race?,’ and they said, ‘Yeah, you’re the winner, man,’ and I rode around another lap like, ‘Are you serious?,’ this is unbelievable.”
The next event for the CARS Racing Tour will take place June 22 at Dominion Raceway, the Radley Cadillac & Chevrolet 125, a standalone event for the late model stock cars with support from various local divisions at the highly-competitive, high-banked layout near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
For more information on the CARS Tour, visit their website at CARSRacingTour.com, or follow them on Facebook (@CARSTour), Twitter (@CARSTour), Instagram (@cars_tour), and Snapchat (@carstour). The series also has its own YouTube channel, Roku channel (available through its TV website), and a new publicly available Amazon FireTV app.
THE FINISH
CARS Late Model Stock Tour
WhosYourDrive.org 125
Larry King Law’s Langley Speedway – June 8, 2019
POS NUM DRIVER LAPS REASON OUT
1. 08 Deac McCaskill 125
2. 22 Bobby McCarty 125
3. 12 Sammy Smith 125
4. 98 Adam Lemke 125
5. 99 Layne Riggs 125
6. 57 Justin Carroll 125
7. 19 Cameron Bowen 125
8. 17P Stacy Puryear 125
9. 88 Josh Berry 125
10. 63 Tyler Matthews 125
11. 90 Terry Carroll 125
12. 1 Jonathan Findley 125
13. 07 Camden Gullie 125
14. 2 Brandon Pierce 125
15. 81 Mini Tyrrell 125
16. 19C Jessica Cann 125
17. 78 Corey Heim 125
18. 03 Brenden Queen 105 Accident
19. 17 Taylor Gray 88 Mechanical
20. 77 Trevor Ward 86 Mechanical
21. 91 Justin S. Carroll 76 Mechanical
22. 54 Drew Dollar 74 Mechanical
23. 14 Ryan Repko 71 Mechanical
24. 74 Ronald Hill 66 Accident
25. 25 Zack St. Onge 33 Accident
26. 27 Tommy Lemons, Jr. 0 DNS
Sources: Tony Stevens/CARS Tour PR