Thursday night at Butler Motor Speedway wrote the next chapter of a summer-long battle between Trevor Neville and Mike McKinney.
Coming into the contest, the two Illinois racers held first and second place in the DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals points standings – a fitting scene for the two, who put on a hard battle in the closing laps that ended with McKinney getting by Neville late to secure his fifth Hell Tour victory of the season.
“We race each other every week whether it’s Summer Nationals or not,” McKinney said of his competition with Neville. “[Neville] has been really good this year, and it’s twice now leading has kind of bit him. I’ve been able to run him down from second and just do the opposite of what he does, but you’ve got to be good enough to be able to do that.”
From third on the starting grid, McKinney found himself three seconds behind Neville five laps into the main event. But a few cautions and lapped traffic allowed McKinney to reel in Neville, and by Lap 19, he was right on Neville’s tail.
McKinney (96M) hunting down Neville (777) in the final laps. (Tyler Carr Photo)
Going into Turn 3, McKinney rode the middle of the track while Neville stayed on the high side. Coming out of Turn 4, McKinney crept in front of Neville and beat him to the start/finish line by .035 seconds to take the lead.
However, McKinney was forced to restart one time after taking the lead. On the restart, Neville attempted a slider on McKinney out of Turn 2 but McKinney held strong up high to maintain the lead, finishing over a second ahead of Neville when the checkered flag flew.
“That top of [Turns] 1 and 2 was really thin and I just started running that a lot harder and was able to get a little bit of a better exit out of 2,” McKinney said. “Was running a little bit lower than [Neville] was in [Turns] 3 and 4 and just saw the gap get closer and closer and was running him down before we hit that lapped traffic and obviously the lapped traffic helped.”
UP NEXT
Week 5 of DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals competition continues Friday, July 12, at Crystal Motor Speedway in Crystal, MI. Tickets will be on sale at the gate on race day. If you can’t be there to watch in person, stream every lap live on DIRTVision.
ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view results here)
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 96M-Mike McKinney[3]; 2. 777-Trevor Neville[2]; 3. 24-Zeke McKenzie[1]; 4. 17N-Dillon Nusbaum[5]; 5. 7-Brad Deyoung[9]; 6. 5CS-Curt Spalding[7]; 7. 74M-Manix Furqueron[6]; 8. 117-Kevin Reeve[4]; 9. 14-Dalton Lane[10]; 10. 25-Josh Lolmaugh[12]; 11. 54-Zachary Hawk[11]; 12. 65-Todd Sherman[15]; 13. 82-Brennan Sherman[8]; 14. 14T-Mario Toniolo[16]; 15. 8C-Corey Bevard[13]; 16. 9-Garrett Rons[18]; 17. 5D-David VanGuilder[17]; 18. 26-Anthony Carter[19]; 19. 7S-Rick Swartout[20]; 20. 64M-Tim McCafferty[21]; 21. 96S-Terry Sroufe[22]; 22. 4M-Dustin Moore[14]
