Long Island Motorsports News - Lisa Pignatare Column

June 17, Westfield, MA--- Like many others on Friday night I was wondering, is the SK Modified going to take over an hour to run forty laps? Luckily they didn't. Leading 39 laps was Willie Hardie. By lap five I found myself watching the middle of the pack, as the top ten were single-file racing. Three laps later the whole field was single file. At that point I started to wonder if the rest of the race was going to be single file and the only action being someone searching the others back bumper. Proving me wrong was 'TC' Ted Christopher. Then on lap thirteen, the first of eight cautions, which is a bit much. I noticed in this event all the action had happened on restarts. With that I found it hard to get into the race. At the end of the race though the biggest battle went on. Hardie, Christopher and Woody Pitkat were battling for the lead. While watching this, I was listening to the crowd was saying. Most of the fans were pulling for Hardie, and boy were they unhappy. Pitkat and Christopher got passed him with only a half a lap left.
"He was blocking the bottom and I ran him on the outside and he drive me up and up," was Pitkat's remarks in victory lane after his battle with Hardie.

In the Late Models I found to be one of the best races of the night. The first leader of the race was Mike Quintiliano in the #11 machine. The field started was able to settle down. But it picked right back up when the caution flag came out on lap five. Making his way through the pack was Ryan Posocco in his #3 Eagle Leasing machine. This season though, Posocco hasn't been much of a contender for a win in my eyes. But he proved why he was champion in this class two years ago. Posocco was able to take the lead with less than ten laps to go. He faced very little competition from the #17 of Jim Peterson to secure the win.

"Its been a while. It has been frustrating," was Posocco's first reactions when he got out of his car.

In the SK Lights I noticed that they had put another rookie on the front row. This week it was the #10 of Heather DesRochers. When I saw this, I was wondering if she could prove me wrong about having a rookie on the front row. Well, she did prove to me that some rookies are capable of competing up front without bring out the yellow flag. And like last week Kyle Spencer couldn't bring his car up to speed. Looking back at the lead, Mike Lane in his #20 machine was challenging for the lead. He was able to take it from DesRochers for a short while with DesRochers taking it back from him. On a restart on lap ten though Lane out and out punted DesRochers into the wall so he could take the lead. I know that there were not many happy people in grandstands. Lane was black flagged for the incident and that put the #60 of Glenn Griswold into the lead. Once he went into the lead, he never looked back.

In the Limited Late Models it was Andrew Durand seeing checkers for the fourth time this season. When the race was done I was thinking, why don't we just give Durand the championship? He has won four out of five races and I just cant help but wonder how many races will he win this year.

Also taking down a feature win for the second time was Jeff Jolly in his North Haven Animal Hospital sponsored #2 D.A.R.E Stock.

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