Burt Myers Breaks Drought; Brown Overcomes Holleman at Bowman Gray

It’s been a long time coming, but Burt Myers finally won a race in the Brad’s Golf Car’s Modified Series.

And not to be outdone, after Myers won the first 25-lap race, Jonathan Brown won the second 25-lap Modified race for his fourth win of season.

As for Myers, the 10-time points champion and 85-time winner, he had not won a race since June 26 of last year, the same weekend as the race he won on Saturday. To do it, Myers had to defeat 11-time champion and 94-time winner Tim Brown, who finished runner-up.

“I tell you, you get to wondering sometimes when it’s coming back around,” Myers said. “We have just not quit working. It’s just satisfying that it’s paying off. We’ve just been changing one thing after another. Then you get out in left field, and then you get behind home plate, you just kind of have to find a happy medium. And we finally found it.”

Before Saturday’s win, the best Myers had finished was fourth, and he did that four times.

“The car hasn’t been terrible,” he said. “You know, there were a handful of cars that were a little better than everybody else, but you had about 10 cars that were all equal. We just weren’t in the right place at the right time.

“We’ve been really focusing on making the car fast. We could go sort of fast, but you had to really hustle to do it. Now we’ve got the car where if I want to hustle I can go really fast. So, whenever you can do that, that equals getting the pole – and in these twin 25s that’s kind of the key to the win.”

Things started well for Myers in qualifying. He had the fastest lap of the night at 13.141 seconds, which was the fastest lap by any Modified driver this season.

“You know when you get the pole in the twin 25 it’s yours to lose at that point,” Myers said. “And we had a good enough car that we just needed to be able to start there and get that inside position and get going. I was cautious at the beginning, and towards the end there, I started seeing how good of a car we had and started to pull away.”

Jason Myers, Burt’s brother, who started the night two points behind leader Brandon Ward for the points lead, finished third. Ward finished fourth and Jonathan Brown was fourth.

“You start wondering, are we going to win again?,” Burt Myers said. “And you start wondering if it’s the car, if it’s us, if it’s whatever. And you have fans and you have people asking, ‘What’s wrong? What’s going on? Why aren’t you winning?’ It starts playing on you, but the fact of it is we kept a positive attitude. 

“I’ve been doing this long enough that it comes in spurts, and we had about five years there where we couldn’t do much wrong. And this year we can’t do much right.”

Jonathan Brown won the previous week, but he had to fight hard for his victory in the second race. Ward finished runner-up, followed by Chris Fleming, and Tim Brown. Jason Myers was ninth and Burt Myers was 10th.

“We’ve been very blessed — four victories this year,” Jonathan Brown said. “We didn’t have the best car tonight. We thought we were way better than we were in qualifying. We just didn’t have the speed we thought we did. The car rolled a good lap. It just didn’t have any speed. For whatever reason we qualified eighth and finished fifth in that first race.”

After Burt Myers drew 10 in the Madhouse Scramble, the field was inverted at that point and Jonathan Brown started sixth.

“I felt pretty good, but thought we’d maybe be third or fourth, to be honest with you,” Jonathan Brown said. “It just all depends on what shakes out with the front row. Ultimately it ended up working out.”

John Holleman IV, who also won last week in one of the twin 50-lap races, passed by Zach Brewer to claim the early lead in the second Modified race of the night. Jonathan Brown moved up behind Holleman in second, giving shot after shot to the bumper of Holleman.

Then on lap 22. Jonathan Brown was able to nudge Holleman outside and then dashed to the inside of Holleman in attempt to pass him. On the pass, Holleman shook and eventually ran into Junior Snow around turn 3.

“It took my car a few laps to get going there,” Jonathan Brown said. “Once I got going I could I just run off, just run over the 69 (Holleman). His left-rear nerf bar was broke off the bumper and I kept hooking his rear bumper to my front bumper. I was afraid we were going to get tangled up.”

There was a caution after the wreck, and Holleman got out of his car and approached Jonathan Brown’s car.

“The main power switch in my car is basically just a little key,” Jonathan Brown said. “And I’ve got it wired in there in case it ever fell out, but I cut my car off to talk to him there, and I told him I’d come talk to him after the race ended.”

“He was talking somewhat civilized for a little bit there, and then he decided to reach down and grab my power key and rip it out of the car. He was trying to rip the wiring out of it so I couldn’t finish the race, but I ultimately I got the key back in the thing and fired it up and went on to win the race.”

The race continued and Jonathan Brown held on the last three laps for the win. Ward was second, followed by Chris Fleming and Tim Brown.

All eyes were on the 100-lap race in the McDowell Heating & Air Sportsman Series to see if Amber Lynn could take the outright lead for most wins by a female driver at Bowman Gray. Lynn won last week for her 11th win overall, tying her with Susan Kimel. However, it wasn’t her night. She was eventually helped off into the pits and finished 15th.

But it was Michael Adams who won the race – his first win since June 12, 2012. To do so, he had to outlast Wesley Thompson.

“It feels like the monkey is off our back,” Adams said. “The car was great tonight.”

Adams took the lead on lap 57, and held it until lap 80. From there, Adams and points leader Tommy Neal started playing a game of chicken. There was restart after restart because the NASCAR officials didn’t like the way Adams and Neal restarted.

“There at the end Tommy started playing games, I felt like,” Adams said. “He said I wasn’t giving him enough room. I told him he was trying to crowd me down. He ran over my right front and knocked the brake off. I raced him with respect, and I’ve got all the respect in the world for him. If he wants to play those games, I guess we will.”

On the restart, Neal tried to get around Adams, but it appeared that Neal had a flat tire coming around turn 1 and had to go to the pits.

“We kept having caution after caution and wouldn’t let the air pressure build up. It was actually making the car tighter. We needed a long green-flag run for the car to work like we wanted it to.”

The race, which had double-file restarts the first eight cautions, went to a single-file restart when it resumed on lap 96. Adams pulled away to defeat Thompson. Zack Clifton was third, Zack Ore was fourth, and Justin Taylor was fifth.

“Wesley had a really good car tonight,” Adams said. “I love racing with Wesley. He’s a stand-up guy. His whole family is. I was glad to see him run up front. But he’s always run me with respect. I’ve run him with respect and ended up tonight pretty good.”

Christian Joyce picked up the win in the Law Offices of John Barrow Street Stock Series 20-lap race. Joyce, who won his fourth win of his career, had to withstand five cautions. including one on the next-to-last lap.

On the final lap, Joyce had a slight lead over Billy Gregg, who was tied with his son Nate for first place in the points standings, and extended it ever so slightly, but Gregg inched closer around Turn 4. Gregg was just behind Joyce, but he couldn’t slide under Joyce for the win.

“I’ve got to thank Billy Gregg,” Joyce said. “He ran me clean and he always has.”

Nate Gregg finished third and Bryant Robertson was fourth.

The final race of the night was a 15-lap race in the Q104.1 Stadium Stock Series. Brandon Brendle, who was second place in the points standings behind leader A.J. Sanders, won for the third time this season.

Brandon Crotts was second, followed by Blaine Curry. Sanders was fourth and Chuck Wall was fifth.

Bowman Gray Stadium won’t hold any racing this Saturday in celebration of the Fourth of July weekend. Racing returns to the famed quarter-mile track on Saturday, July 9. The racing that night will be highlighted by the second 100-lap race of the season the Brad’s Golf Cars Modified Series presented by Real Rock 105.7. In that race, the Fans’ Challenge will be in effect, meaning the top four qualifiers in the Modified Series will have the opportunity to take the Fans’ Challenge and go to the back of the field. If any of those drivers finish in the top four they will split a $6,000 prize pool.

In addition to the 100-lap Modified race on July 9, there will be double points in all four divisions. There will also be twin 20-lap races in the McDowell Heating & Air Sportsman series, a 20-lap race in the Law Offices of John Barrow Street Stock Series, and one or two 15-lap races in the Q104.1 Stadium Stock Series.

And to add to the tension, double points will be on the line for each race.

BGS Racing PR