Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky., looked like his old dominating self Sunday at Selinsgrove Speedway.
Regaining his winning touch on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series, Lanigan passed Morgan Bagley of Tyler, Texas, for the lead on lap 12 and drove away from Shane Clanton of Zebulon, Ga., late in the distance to capture the 40-lap Jeff's Auto Body National Open.
Lanigan, 44, earned $8,200 for winning the half-mile oval's National Open event for an unprecedented third consecutive year. It was his second WoO triumph of a frustrating 2015 season but his first driving his own Club 29 Race Car.
Clanton settled for runner-up honors, 0.772 of a second behind Lanigan after a lap-48 caution flag set up a green-white-checkered finish. Clanton's Capital Race Cars teammate, Chase Junghans of Manhattan, Kan., steadily marched forward from the seventh starting spot to finish third, while Bagley settled for fourth place after leading laps 1-11 and Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va., placed fifth after starting on the pole position.
"It's hard to believe it took this long to win a race with our own stuff," said Lanigan, whose previous WoO victory this season, on July 18 at Deer Creek Speedway in Spring Valley, Minn., came in Bagley's backup Club 29 machine. "After winning so many the last few years (he set a WoO single-season win record of 17 in 2014), you kind of get used to it last year. Then you come out this year and it takes so long to win and you don't know what's going on."
Lanigan, who decided to drop off the WoO circuit as a regular in mid-July and has entered only selected races since then, was certainly glad he opted to make the overnight haul to Selinsgrove after finishing a disappointing 25th in Saturday night's Firecracker 100 presented by GottaRace.com at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa. His convincing performance seemed to shake off the doldrums that have been plaguing him throughout the 2015 campaign.
"We've had a good car all year but just had some problems and stupid things happen that are out of our control," said Lanigan, who recorded his 72 nd career WoO win. "Last night (at Lernerville) I think we had the best car there too - we were actually just riding there (behind early leader Jared Miley of South Park, Pa.), but (on a lap-30 restart) we broke the input shaft on the tranny and that was it.
"Tonight everything finally worked out right and our results show it."
Lanigan, who started fifth, hustled up to second place by lap four and proceeded to stalk Bagley's lead machine. Finally, on lap 12, Lanigan ducked underneath Bagley off turn four and surged into the top spot for good.
"I was really just riding," Lanigan said of the race's early stages. "I didn't want to abuse my tires and I wanted to just see where (Bagley) was running. He had a good car there, too, and really, we changed our line up a little to pass him.
"I told him afterward: 'Sometimes it kind of sucks to be leading that early because the guy running behind you can change his line up and put a move on you.' That's kind of what I did."
Bagley, 28, simply wasn't fast enough to repel his chassis builder, leaving him short once again of his first-ever WoO checkered flag. He managed to dive-bomb to the inside of Lanigan on laps 16 and 17 but then proceeded to lose ground with each passing lap and finished in fifth place.
" It just seems like he was a little more maneuverable than me," Bagley said of Lanigan. "He could kind of turn across the center and hit a little bit better lines on the racetrack. It got tougher for me as the race went on because I kind of needed the whole racetrack to turn the car."
Clanton, 39, appeared to have the best shot at unseating Lanigan after breaking into second place with a lap-24 pass of Bagley. But the runaway WoO points leader never drew close enough to seriously threaten Lanigan.
According to Clanton, the caution flags on lap 23 (Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., slowed with a flat tire) and lap 48 (Jim Yoder of Selinsgrove, Pa., fell off the pace on the homestretch) only hurt him.
"I needed no cautions," said Clanton, who registered his 32nd top-five finish in 38 WoO A-Main starts this season. "We was running good there until that lap-23 caution kind of sealed my left-rear tire up some. I didn't stick as good after that."
The 22-year-old Junghans also wasn't at his best as the race wound down. He managed to sneak by Richards and Bagley to reach third place shortly after the lap-23 restart, but the rising WoO sophomore wasn't able to threaten Lanigan nor Clanton.
"We were really good," Junghans said. "I started getting tight towards the end and I spun the tires on the restart and those guys took off, but we're happy with third."
A 39-car field signed in for the event, which brought the WoO LMS to Selinsgrove for the third consecutive year.
Lanigan was the overall fastest in time trials with a lap of 19.196 seconds.
Heat winners were Lanigan, Clanton, Richards and Junghans. Jeff Rine of Danville, Pa., and Gary Stuhler of Greencastle, Pa., captured the B-Mains.
The next action for the WoO LMS is the Sept. 18-19 Keyser Manufacturing Down 'n Dirty 100 weekend at Berlin Raceway in Marne, Mich. Two complete programs ($8,000 to win on Friday and $12,000 to win on Saturday) will be contested on the dirt surface spread over Berlin's asphalt.
For more information on the WoO LMS, visit WorldofOutlaws.com.
World of Outlaws Late Model Series
Selinsgrove Speedway – Selinsgrove, PA
Jeff’s Auto Body National Open – Sept. 6, 2015
1. (5) Darrell Lanigan/40 $8,200
2. (8) Shane Clanton/40 $4,550
3. (7) Chase Junghans/40 $3,250
4. (2) Morgan Bagley/40 $2,850
5. (1) Josh Richards/40 $2,650
6. (3) Chub Frank/40 $2,150
7. (6) Rick Eckert/40 $2,050
8. (19) Frank Heckenast Jr./40 $1,850
9. (17) Jeff Rine/40 $1,750
10. (12) Steve Campbell/40 $1,150
11. (11) Kenny Pettyjohn/40 $1,000
12. (9) Eric Wells/40 $1,450
13. (4) Gregg Satterlee/40 $850
14. (10) Tim McCreadie/40 $1,450
15. (18) Gary Stuhler/40 $750
16. (16) Dave Zona/40 $750
17. (23) Jordan Yaggy/40 $910
18. (15) Matt Cochran/40 $640
19. (21) Dylan Yoder/40 $620
20. (14) Bryan Bernheisel/40 $610
21. (13) Brandon Overton/39 $1,150
22. (24) Chad Hollenbeck/39 $600
23. (22) Boom Briggs/38 $1,150
24. (20) Jim Yoder/38 $625
*Earnings include Winners Circle program and cash contingency award bonuses
Time of Race: 20 Mins., 32.996 Secs.
Margin of Victory: 0.772 Secs.
Yellow Flags: 2 (laps 23, 38)
Lap Leaders: Bagley (1-11); Lanigan (12-40)
Provisional Starters: Yaggy, Hollenbeck
