World
Crown 250
Paul
Kelley Steals the Show In Zaxby's World Crown 250 at Peachstate
Kelley
Passes a Dominant Hawkins With Two to Go for Second-Straight World
Crown Triumph
Years
from now, when fans and drivers look back on the stats of the
2007 running of the Zaxby's World Crown 250 at Peachstate
Speedway, they will see that Matt Hawkins led 244 of the 250
laps. Those records will show Hawkins setting fast time in
qualifying and people will see that Hawkins had a dominant
racecar.
They
won't see Matt Hawkins' name as the winner of the Zaxby's
World Crown 250 though, at least not this time.
Paul
Kelley, who nearly went down a lap to Hawkins before a lap 178
caution kept him on the lead lap and gave him a shot at victory,
hunted Hawkins down late in the race. With just a few laps
to go, Kelley dug deep to get to Hawkins' bumper. The two
battled hard, but with two laps remaining, Kelley muscled his way
by Hawkins and the young driver never looked back for his
second-straight World Crown victory and his third overall victory
in the prestigious Pro Late Model event.
"Two
in a row feels good. Three overall feels even better,"
said Kelley. "Something big like this, you do have to give
it that extra effort. I wouldn't take anybody else or
anything like that. Trading paint is fine. You have to
do that. The cars are so close, if you don't, you're not
going to pass anybody."
The
paint was traded with two laps remaining, as Kelley's Lakeshore
Motorsports #23 machine closed in on Hawkins' #22. Off the
second turn on lap 248, Kelley dove beneath Hawkins for the lead.
The two made contact, ran door-to-door through the third and
fourth turns, but Kelley emerged with the lead coming to the white
flag.
"We
got on the inside of Hawkins and evidently he was still on the
outside of us," said Kelley. "I may have crowded him
just a little bit. I felt him up there, so I pulled back
down. I guess he fell in right behind me and I knew that now
that he was behind me, I was just going to have to drive the
wheels off it.
"I
just stuck it to the bottom because I knew that I couldn't let
him get underneath me to have a chance. The high side at
that point didn't have anything left, because you can only make
the high side work in the first laps on new tires. I knew if
I just kept it on the bottom, I would be all set and that's how
it worked out."
As
happy as Kelley was with the way things turned out in the final
laps, Hawkins found little consolation in finishing second after
dominating much of the race.
"I
just tried to run around the bottom when I was up front," said
Hawkins. "I knew even if he could get under me, he
couldn't get by me. I didn't really know whether to run
the top or bottom. I just stuck to the bottom. But he
got under me and pretty much put me in the wall. I tried as
hard as I could to get back to him to wreck him. I just
couldn't get to him.
"When
he got under me, I didn't pinch him or nothing. I gave him
all the room he needed. He just turned right on me.
When he turned right on me, I turned left on him. He hit the
wall and that just put me more into the wall."
Kelley
nearly did not even have a chance to make a move for the lead late
in the race. Kelley ran second to Hawkins for much of the
early part of the race and continued to run inside the top five,
but after the lap-100 competition caution, Kelley's car was not
quite the same. The handle went away from his #23 machine
and was within a half-straight-away from getting lapped by
Hawkins. A lap 178 caution kept him on the lead lap.
From
there, strategy took over where Kelley's car could not keep up.
With just a few laps remaining before the final competition yellow
of the race at lap 200, Kelley brought his car to pit road for new
tires. In the final six laps under green before the lap-200 break,
Kelley picked up two positions on the track, positions that if he
had not gained, may have impeded his progress to get into a
winning position.
"We
got out there for that second 100 and the car was going pretty
good in the first maybe 50, 60 laps. From there, it just
fell off big time. It got so loose. My spotter was on
the radio telling me, ‘You gotta go. Man, you gotta go.'
I was driving the wheels off of it. He said if it had been a
few more laps, I would've gotten lapped. Luck happens that
way, I guess.
"Coming
in to pit when we did, that was really important. We kind of
argued a little bit on the radio about what to do. Then our
‘shot caller' got on the radio and said to come in and put on
four tires, because if you don't you're going to have to pass
guys when they have new tires also. For now, they were all
sitting ducks. So, there was only one thing to do. We
came in and got four tires and went back out.
"We
didn't get around him until the last couple laps. If it
took us a couple laps to get by those two cars in that last run,
then we probably wouldn't have had enough time to pass him."
The
win earned Kelley the $10,000 winner's purse for the
second year in a row. Hawkins earned bonuses for leading at
both competition breaks and brought home second. Bubba
Pollard ran strong throughout the 250-lap feature to finish third,
while 2007 Georgia Asphalt Series Champion Russell Fleeman and Wes
Burton rounded out the top-five.
