South Carolina driver races to win on night 2 of Gopher 50
Jul. 8—Chris Madden picked up his first Lucas Oil Late Model Series main event win of 2023 on Friday night at Deer Creek Speedway.
Madden took the lead on the 13th lap from Brandon Overton and went on to win night two of the Gopher 50 weekend.
Madden crossed the finish line 1.539 seconds ahead of Overton. Bobby Pierce was third followed by Ricky Thornton Jr., and Jonathan Davenport. With the win, Madden became the 16th different winner this season with the Lucas Oil Series.
Madden found Victory Lane for the 18th time in his career and picked up $5,000 for the win plus an additional $750 bonus. Madden, who won the Gopher 50 in 2017, will be looking for his second win in the event which pays $50,000 to win on Saturday.
"I just found a little line there where I could run the middle and got in the corner real good. When Brandon [Overton] got to traffic it's better to be behind a guy than leading him. We made a good run down here and got on the outside of him and we just got the lead there," said the 48-year-old South Carolina native.
"I think the racetrack was great tonight, not because I won but we could move around kind of all over the place. We made a few swings at it for this feature for tomorrow night so hopefully we are headed in the right direction. Hats off to my crew for working extremely hard on this car."
Overton, who entered the weekend third in the Lucas Oil Series standings, led the first 12 laps before his fellow front row starter Madden passed him.
"We were a little bit better tonight. Obviously, mother nature helped us a ton there's still a lot of brown out there. At least we didn't fall back. We are steadily working on it we aren't giving up. We love coming here. It's an awesome racetrack. The track was good for that little feature there. We'll take it," the defending NAPA Auto Parts Gopher 50 winner.
Pierce, who was in contention for the win Thursday night, battled several laps with Overton to round out the podium in third.
"I think the big race tomorrow night is going to be really good. I have looked forward to this race and 75 laps is three times the length the last two nights have been," he said. "We will see how the track transitions you know. I think it was about to get to that point probably where in about 25 laps the middle would have become awfully slick. We were right there but we just couldn't make anything happen. It's going to be a really fun show tomorrow night. I am still kicking myself from yesterday we would have probably been on the pole after the last two nights."
Completing the top ten were Hudson O'Neal, Devin Moran, Spencer Hughes, Tim McCreadie, Chad Simpson.
—Chatfield's Lucas Schott won the USRA Modifieds feature race.
Friday's full results
