McCarthy Top Toyota At Valley Speedway

After winning Saturday night’s feature, Ace McCarthy led 11 of 30 laps on his way to a second-place finish to lead Toyota in the POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget League feature at Valley Speedway, Sunday night. 

It appeared that Buddy Kofoid was on the way to his fifth POWRi victory in the last eight events as he pulled out to a comfortable lead heading into the final laps, only to have trouble coming out of turn four as he came to take the white flag. The 18-year-old Kofoid appeared to make contact with the wall, which sent him tumbling down the front straight. 

Before Kofoid’s crash, Toyota-powered cars had led all 28 laps, with rookie Emerson Axsom leading the opening eight laps from the pole, with McCarthy and fellow Toyota driver Zach Daum rounding out the top three.  

McCarthy would use a yellow flag to his advantage as he passed Axsom for the lead down the front straight into turn one on lap nine restart with Kofoid moving up to the third position. By lap 13, Kofoid had moved up to second. He quickly began to close on McCarthy and on lap 20, he would pass him going into three and then hold off McCarthy’s inside move through three and four with Kofoid taking over the top spot running the high side out of turn four.

Kofoid would then begin to pull away from the field and stretched out nearly a full straight-away lead before a lap 27 yellow bunched the field, with eventual winner Logan Seavey having moved up to second with McCarthy in third.  After another yellow slowed the field once more, Kofoid would quickly pull away from the field in leading laps 27 and 28 before his incident.

After the final restart, Seavey would drive to the victory with McCarthy finishing second.  Axsom would finish fourth and Daison Pursley captured his third consecutive top-five finish on the weekend in fifth.

Daum recovered from an early spin to finish seventh and Sam Johnson placed tenth to give Toyota five of the top-10 finishers.

The Toyota Midget car program is back in action on July 17 at Jefferson County Speedway for the first of four USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget events to be run in three different states over five days.

TRD PR