August 11, Riverhead, NY--- This past Saturday's race at Riverhead Raceway started with Scott Pedersen on the pole and Will Farrell scheduled to start 2^nd, but Farrell elected to start in the rear, which moved Ralph Tasso to the outside pole.

    At the drop of the green, Scott Pedersen pulled out front, as Tasso and Arne Pedersen battled side by side for 2^nd, while Mike Mujsce and Kenny Hyde followed. The field strung out to a single file up front by lap 5, but Tasso started to pressure Scott Pedersen, while Tom Kraft moved up to 5^th spot after passing Mike Mujsce.

    On lap 8, as Tasso tried to pass Arne Pedersen, the two of them collided, with Arne Pedersen spinning across in front of Tasso, and Tasso then spun into the turn 3 wall, as almost all of the rest of the field piled in. Tasso showed a great amount of displeasure with Arne Pedersen after Tasso exited his car, and Tasso had to be restrained more than once by track officials as they escorted him off.  All involved in the wreck were okay, and able to continue, but Tasso’s car needed to be towed off.

    On the next restart, Kenny Hyde, who re-started in 2^nd, shot past Pedersen to take the lead, with Arne Pedersen staying right with him as Scott Pedersen slipped back to 4^th.  Roger Maynor started his charge at the halfway mark, getting by Kraft for 3^rd and challenging Arne Pedersen for 2^nd just as Carl Baxter hit the wall in turn 3, bringing out the caution on lap 13.

    On the next restart, Hyde took off once more, as Maynor and Arne Pedersen battled for 2^nd, with Maynor taking the spot. Maynor then started looking for a way to get by Hyde, but Hyde held on. Suddenly, Maynor started to make his moved, but was bumped as he did by Pedersen, causing him to get squirrelly and fall back a bit, and that allowed Hyde to pull away a bit. Maynor never seemed to be the same after that, as Hyde maintained a good margin in the lead.

    Now one of the stranger things to happen took center stage. Mike Mujsce and Tom Ferrara had collided a few laps earlier, and were off the racing surface, near the starters stand, when a small fire was noticed in one of the cars, and the officials called for a caution to extinguish the fire. During that caution, track officials made the call that the ‘time limit’ (28 minutes by some accounts?) for the race had been reached, so after the small fire was put out, the field was lined up and shown the checkered flag on lap 20 of the 25 lap contest, and the race was declared over. Kenny Hyde was the winner, with Roger Maynor, Arne Pedersen, Tom Kraft and Scott Pedersen rounding out the top 5.