With Speedweek officially in our rear view, we can get back to the competitive local scene. While we were covering Speedweek last week, one driver hit the milestone of 10 wins for the first time in 2019. Johnny Smith has been a rocket ship the last two years at GVAT and kept up his dominance with his 2nd consecutive wingless win and 10th overall win this season between winged and wingless battle. Smith has a little breathing room in the wins department as his closest competitior, Garrett Bard turns his focus to 305 Sprint Cars for the rest of the season but Damon Paul and Jimmy Glenn are not too far behind with 8 and 7 wins respectively. Where Smith does not have breathing room is in the 600 Winged Points standings at GVAT. The Smith Brothers are going head to head each week and Johnny has a slight 9 point lead over his brother Mikey at the moment. Last year the title came down to the last race and Johnny lost the championship to Rob Pajauis, so he will be fighting down to the very end.
Outside of GVAT, we have some close points races at Action Track, Linda’s, Lanco, Spirit Auto Center Speedway and Path Valley. We talked about Action Track’s point race yesterday in our predictions column, where there is a two person race between Billy Pauch Jr. and Kenny Miller III with now only two races left. Pauch holds a 35 point lead and with a race eliminated to race last night the gap is going to be harder and harder for Miller to overcome. At Linda’s in the wingless division, the dominant Tommy Kunsman Jr. only has a 5 point lead over Ryan Groff. Even with all of Kunsman’s wins in the wingless division, Groff is proving consistency is the name of the game.
At Lanco, it appears that the championship will go down to the two seasoned veterans of the track, Mike Rutherford and Heath Hehnly. Rutherford got a jump on Hehnly as he went on a tear earlier in the year as Hehnly ran into problems, but it appears Hehnly has the upper hand lately when he went on his own 3 race win streak. As we approach Labor Day which is the sign of the end of the season for Lanco, Rutherford carries a 12 point lead. Speaking of Rutherford not only does he has a chance to win the championship at Lanco but he is currently your point’s leader at Spirit Auto Center Speedway. With the track off for the next few weeks, this battle will have to wait but Matt Smith will be looking to take this title from Rutherford as he is only 12 points back.
Last but not least the last tight points battle that we will highlight is the one going on at Path Valley. Alec Quiggle went on a tear a few weeks ago sweeping the weekend of racing at the track and that has been the difference in points in his battle with Hayden Miller. That lead for Quiggle is up to 15 points now but Randy Kunkle is looming in the background as he is only 39 points back.
Tomorrow we will have our previews and predictions up as we get one race closer to settling championship battles at these tracks.