~ By Tom Boggie

I’ve got to get me some of those cute, little flame emojis.

Everything at Albany-Saratoga Speedway last Friday was hot – weather, tempers, racing, you name it, it was hot.

Peter Britten is red-hot. He picked up the Madsen Overhead Doors/ Flach Performance Products $500 Back-to-Back bonus with his second straight modified victory, this coming just two weeks after he told me, “We’re scratching our heads, just like everybody else.”

The last time Britten won two features in a row was 2017, which was also the year he won the modified point championship. He was driving Andy Romano’s No. 97 that year, but when the team began to struggle in the dog days of summer, Britten came to Malta with his own Super DIRT Series car, and ran off back-to-back wins on Aug. 25 and Sept. 1 to lock up the championship.

“This is a tough game,” said Britten after his win last Friday. “When you’re down, you’re really down and when you’re up, you’re really up. Now that we’re up, hopefully, we can keep it going.”

Ken Tremont Jr. and Don Ronca struck another blow for the over-60 crowd, with Tremont finishing second and Ronca coming home fifth.

“These cars are so finicky,” said the 60-year-old Tremont, who admitted he didn’t know he was racing for the lead with Britten in the closing laps of the race. “You just have to go week by week and hope you hit it right.”

Ronca, 63, was hot, like seething hot, at himself as he sat in his car in the tech area after the race, with sweat running down his face. “I haven’t even SEEN the front all year,” he lamented after giving up the lead to Britten on lap 27 and then fading to fifth. “I stayed on the top too long. When he (Britten) got by me, I should have gone back to the bottom.”

Fans who watched the show on Dirt Track Digest TV got a front-row seat to the dust-up between Chad Jeseo and Scott Towslee in the pro stock feature. With two laps to go, they hooked together between the third and fourth turns and came to a stop, facing the infield, with the left side of Jeseo’s car against the right side of Towslee’s car.

“Big Bad” Chad pulled off his helmet, climbed halfway out of his window and looked to be giving Towslee a little lecture. He must have touched a nerve, because Towslee then removed his helmet and restraint gear, started some finger-pointing and yelling of his own and had to be restrained by members of the track crew as he tried to climb out of his car.

Hey, boys will be boys.

That incident, however, helped Chucky Dumblewski record his second win of the season, as he got the jump on Luke Horning on the restart and then caught Horning coming out of the fourth turn on the final lap, beating Cousin Luke by 0.157 seconds.

“Luke took the bottom on the last restart, and I knew I had to make the top work, and it worked,” said Dumblewski, who then gave the crew at DKM Fabrication kudos for helping covert his car to coils.

MORE FROM MALTA

There were other notable moments last Friday at Malta, including Tommy D’Angelo’s first career sportsman victory.

D’Angelo won the annual Mark Hughes Memorial. Ironically, D’Angelo drives the 23C, while Hughes drove the No. 23 prior to his untimely death in a traffic accident in New York City.

D’Angelo began the season running with the limited sportsman, getting a win on May 13. But things changed after he blew the motor in his car.

“When I blew the motor, we decided to buy a new motor and move up,” he said in victory lane. “This is just the second whole race I’ve run with the sportsman.”

D’Angelo became the 11th different winner in the sportsman division this season. The only two-time winner is Pat Jones, and his second win came after Joey Scarborough was disqualified after winning the race.

It’s not often that C.G. Morey gets a top-10 finish at Malta, so his seventh-place run last Friday was pretty impressive. Morey, who turned 58 on July 6, has never won a modified feature, in 320 career starts. His performance at Malta last Friday was his first top-10 finish of the season (in 19 starts). Morey also won his heat race last Friday.

Demetrios Drellos had a short night at Malta. After waiting all week to get his motor back, he went out for hot laps, and promptly blew the motor, according to his Facebook page.

The pro stock division was short one car last week, after Chris Murray and his team were suspended for one week following an altercation in the tech area on July 1.

With his win last Friday, Britten pulled closer to modified point leader Matt DeLorenzo. Going into this Friday night’s action, DeLorenzo has a 535-520 lead, with Mike Mahaney a distant third at 487.

Daniel Joubert, who won the single-cam four-cylinder feature last Friday, was later disqualified, giving the win to Robert Garney.

Chris Grady announced last Friday that the John Grady Memorial Nostalgia Night modified feature will be 43 laps, in honor of Richard Petty’s victory in the NASCAR Grand National race at Albany-Saratoga in 1970. The feature will pay $3,500 to win, $3,000 for second and $2,500 for third. Chris also said that the autograph session from 5-7 p.m. will include legends Billy Pauch Sr. and Kenny Brightbill.

Longtime Albany-Saratoga Speedway fans will remember Pauch driving the Ribley & Harpinger No. 24S at Malta during the 1981 season. Pauch had four runner-up finishes in that white-with-red-trim Gremlin, but never won a feature in that car, and there’s also a debate about him ever winning a feature at Albany-Saratoga. On Sept. 20 that year, he brought his Flemington car to the track to compete in Shootout ’81, which featured Triple 50s, with the overall winner getting $10,000. According to Pauch’s records, he won two of the 50-lappers, which he did. I know, because I was there. But should they count as feature wins? Wouldn’t that be like a NASCAR driver counting a stage victory as a race win? The top prize of $10,000 that night went to Brightbill, and Pauch finished second overall, for his fifth second-place run of the year.

Albany-Saratoga’s card on Friday will include the third leg of the John Ray & Sons/Dean’s Electrical Sportsman Shootout Series, which will pay $1,500 to win.

AROUND THE TRACKS

Brian Berger won last Saturday’s Bryan Goewey Memorial at Lebanon Valley, taking home the top prize of $10,000 for the 44-lap feature. The win was Berger’s second of the season, as he also won the JC Flach Memorial, which paid $5,000 to win. Berger’s win in the Flach Memorial was his first in six years.

Berger almost didn’t make it out for the feature. He said later that his car didn’t feel right, and his crew discovered that a rear radius rod had a broken valve. Berger had to borrow a radius rod from Tremont, his brother-in-law, to get to the starting grid in time for the feature.

The Goewey Memorial was marred by a big wreck on the first lap, involving LJ Lombardo and Ryan Darcy. Darcy’s car ended up climbing the second turn wall and barrel-rolling down the backstretch. Brett Hearn officially came out of retirement for the Goewey Memorial, but was one of many cars caught up in that first-lap wreck and only came back to finish 13th.

Matt Sheppard won Wednesday night’s Super DIRTcar Series race at Big Diamond in Pennsylvania, with Stewart Friesen second. But the big story of the race was probably the fifth-place finish by Albany-Saratoga regular Adam Pierson, who qualified well and then drew the No. 4 starting position.

Every time I look up, Brian Calabrese is running at a different track. Last Saturday, he went to Orange County Speedway in Middletown and finished 11th with his modified.

Todd Stone came from his 17th starting position to win the sportsman/modified feature last Saturday at Devil’s Bowl. Albany-Saratoga regular Dylan Madsen was second, while Jimmy Davis was third in one of the Larry Gallipo team cars.

The DIRTcar 358 modifieds will be competing at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park on Sunday, after getting rained out earlier in the season.