~ By Tom Boggie

Seeing how it’s the 4^th of July (or somewhere close, depending when you read this), I figured it would be a good time to put out a mid-season report card.

But the more I thought about it, it didn’t seem like a good idea. If guys are busting their butts in the garage all week, and then not having the results they want on Friday night, they certainly don’t need some keyboard jockey adding to their aggravation.

So I decided to keep it simple, with two categories: head of the class and overachievers.

The head of the class list at Albany-Saratoga Speedway is topped by Peter Britten. He’s leading the modified points, so why wouldn’t he be at the top? Although Britten has just one win, that coming in the second week of the season, he’s finished in the top five eight times in 11 starts. His only finish out of the top 10 was a 16^th in the Don Davies Memorial Super DIRTcar Series race last week.

Britten’s only other win so far this season came on Nostalgia Night at Orange County, but he’s also had a couple of outstanding runs on the SDS, finishing third at New Egypt and second at Weedsport (as an aside, I was stunned to read that Britten won’t be hitting all of the remaining Super DIRTcar Series races this season, citing the growing cost of following the whole series).

Also at the head of the class is Marc Johnson. The two-time Albany-Saratoga champion picked up his second modified win of the season last Friday night, and also has one victory in the DiCarlo 358 Shootout Series. His biggest win came on Father’s Day, when he drove to victory in the Slate Valley 50 at Devil’s Bowl and walked out with the top prize of $10,000.

I almost dropped Johnson into the overachievers ranks, after he had a string of off nights, finishing 10^th, 12^th and 15^th on consecutive Friday nights at Malta. But his rail-hugging victory over Britten last Friday put him back at the head of the class.

I also have to put Tim Hartman Jr. in that category. He already has 10 wins under his belt heading into July, including a streak of seven in a row at Lebanon Valley Speedway. He’s got three wins at Albany-Saratoga, giving him 41 for his career, and getting a win in the loaded sportsman division at Malta this season is like hitting the lottery – you have to be in it, but it still takes a little luck.

And even though I don’t want to look like an ass-kisser, I’ve got to put Lyle DeVore at the head of the class. Despite his ongoing cancer treatments and numerous surgeries, he’s still giving the racers an excellent (no, it’s not ideal, but I know I couldn’t do any better) track every week, and Albany-Saratoga still produces the best racing in the Northeast.

A few of the drivers who I would put into the overachievers bracket are Jack Lehner, Ryan McCartney and Chris Crane Jr.

Lehner is currently sitting third in the modified point race, and is one of two drivers who has been to victory lane twice this season. At the age of 23, Lehner has developed into one of the best young drivers in the Northeast.

McCartney hasn’t had the same success as Lehner, but he’s getting the handle on modified racing. He’s already got three top-five finishes this season, after just one during the entire 2023 campaign, and is seventh in points.

Crane Jr. went through a tough learning curve in the sportsman division last year, but has become a consistent threat this season. He recorded his first career victory on Don Davies Memorial Night last week, and is just 18 points behind Hartman Jr. in the race for the track championship. After winning the limited sportsman title in 2022, he moved up to the regular sportsman division last year, and was just 15^th in points. What a difference a year makes.

MORE FROM MALTA

Since recording his first career win at Malta during the 2006 season, Matt DeLorenzo has had just four seasons when he didn’t make a trip to victory lane (2010 and 2011 don’t count, because the track was asphalt). So it’s no surprise that he’s getting frustrated with 2024.

DeLorenzo made a big switch last week, abandoning his own Bicknell chassis to drive the car of teammate Brian Gleason. The first night out, in the Don Davies Memorial, he finished ninth, and last Friday night, it looked like he might be headed to his first win of the season.

I’m seen a lot of drivers run the outside over the years, But I’ve never seen two guys as far out as DeLorenzo and Jessey Mueller were. Coming out of the fourth turn, they almost had their right-side tires touching the wall.

But both DeLorenzo and Mueller love to run the top, and it was anyone’s race until lap 29, when Mueller went too wide going through the short chute between three and four and jumped the cushion, bringing out the caution. That put Marc Johnon next to DeLorenzo, and Johnson got the win, with DeLorenzo settling for third behind Britten.

“I was getting looser as the race went on,” said DeLorenzo after recording his best finish since finishing second to Jack Speshock on May 10. “It might have been the tires. These are the same tires we ran on Tuesday night. We made some changes after Tuesday and if we put on new tires, we wouldn’t know if it was the tires that were working or the changes we made.

“(Turns) 3 and 4 were out as far as I’ve even seen it,” he added. “But I wasn’t good on the bottom, so I just stayed out there. Either Jessey or I were going to win it, until he jumped the cushion.”

I asked him if Gleason’s car was handling better than his own had.

“Right now, it is,” he said. “This car doesn’t have the same set-up that we usually run. I wasn’t good in time trials (for the Don Davies Memorial), but we made some changes and it felt good in the heat and in the feature.”

I liked the assessment Marc Johnson made about the extreme line that DeLorenzo and Mueller were using. “The top kept getting dangerous,” he said.

Kim Duell struggled with an ill-handling race car on Friday and only ran 10 laps in the pro stock feature, finishing 14^th. That came one week after he rolled the car in the third turn. As a result, his lead in the points shrunk to only three ahead of Jason Casey.

I ran into my old buddy Tim Clemons in the pits Friday night. Clemons manages Lake View Speedway in South Carolina and had made a trip North to visit some friends. “We shut down the track (Lake View) in July because it gets so hot,” Clemons said. “The guys love it. It gives them some time off to do other things, and it also gives them some time to freshen their cars.”

Clemons had one modified victory at Albany-Saratoga, in 1988, before becoming a regular in the sportsman division, where he won 25 features, as well as the track championship in 1994.

AROUND THE TRACKS

Justin Stone won last Thursday’s 358 modified feature at Airborne Park in Plattsburgh, while another Malta regular, Josh Masterson, picked up the win in the Firecracker 44 Sunday at Devil’s Bowl.

Stewart Friesen won his fourth career pole position in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series last Friday at Nashville. That was his first pole since 2019 at Homestead, Fla. Friesen had an up and down night, eventually finishing 11^th.

Keep an eye on former Albany-Saratoga pro stock champion Josh Coonradt. “The Coon Dawg” (as he’s called by Albany-Saratoga announcer Dan Martin), has moved up to the open sportsman division at Utica-Rome and finished fourth last weekend, after starting 22^nd. The previous week, his first with the open sportsman, he failed to qualify. If my numbers are accurate, Coonradt had nine limited sportsman wins this season before taking the step up in class.

DeVore will be making a trip to Weedsport on Wednesday to receive the Leonard J. Sammons Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to Auto Racing at the annual Northeast Modified Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. DeVore is following in the footsteps of his mentor, C.J. Richards, who won the Sammons Award two years ago. Martin will be handling DeVore’s induction speech. Hey, Lyle, maybe I should tell him stories of some our alcohol-fueled adventures.