PENSACOLA, Fla. - Bubba Pollard took the lead of Friday night’s Southern Super Series feature at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida just before the halfway mark, and went on to score the victory.
It marks the 15th career series victory for the Senoia, Georgia speedster, as he beat a field of 25 asphalt Super Late Model aces to pick up the win in the 125-lap event.
“This is actually a different race car than what we’ve been racing all year,” Pollard said. “It just goes to show you that we have good race cars. We’ve just got a really good piece right now.”
One late race caution on lap 90 erased the gap between first and second, threatening to end Pollard’s dominating performance. Donnie Wilson would have a chance steal back the lead from Pollard as the two restarted side-by-side. The ten lap shootout proved to be more of the same, however, as Pollard got the jump, once again running away with the show.
“I know it wasn’t the most exciting race, but I appreciate all the fans coming out,” Pollard said. “It’s great to see this many people and I can’t thank them enough.”
Practice makes perfect, and that’s exactly what Pollard contributed his wild string of success to.
“We’ve been racing a lot more the last couple of months, about every weekend,” Pollard said. “It definitely helps being in this seat each and every week. All we do is learn more and more. We just keep gaining. We’ve got some big races here toward the end of the year, so hopefully by then we’re going to learn all we can.”
Third-place finisher and defending series champion Donnie Wilson is another driver still searching for the perfect formula. He took over the lead from Cole Williams just 19 laps into the feature, but ran into some frustration with lapped traffic, allowing Pollard to catch up and contend for lead.
“It was a good run for us,” Wilson said. “We finished second the first Blizzard Series race and had bad luck on the second one. I think I ran this one a little too hard but we’ll be back. We’re getting closer.”
Jeff Choquette finished the night in second, one position short of where he wanted to be. Choquette had showed strength earlier that afternoon when he was fastest in both practice sessions, but wasn’t able to transfer that momentum into the feature.
“This was a salvage position,” Choquette said. “I think we were running fourth there for a while with fifth place running us down. We got a late race restart and were able to get up through the gears pretty good. We got to second and were just lucky enough that it was a short enough run to be able to hold (Wilson) off.”
Christian Eckes finished in fourth, with Lawrenceville, Georgia’s Casey Roderick in fifth.
Stephen Nasse unofficially took over sole possession of the series points lead with a sixth place finish.
Next up for the Southern Super Series is a trip to Alabama’s Mobile International Speedway on August 19 for the Lee Fields Memorial.
Southern Super Series
Five Flags Speedway – Pensacola, FL
Unofficial Race Results – July 28, 2017
1. 26 Bubba Pollard
2. 9 Jeff Choquette
3. 2W Donnie Wilson
4. 15 Christian Eckes
5. 18 Casey Roderick
6. 51N Stephen Nasse
7. 19 Kason Plott
8. 26S Chandler Smith
9. 88 Garrett Jones
10. 4 Kyle Plott
11. 11R David Rogers
12. 99 Casey Smith
13. 51 Michael Atwell
14. 98 Paul Kelley
15. 14C Connor Okrzesik
16. 30 Jesse Dutilly
17. 14D Chris Davidson
18. 16 Johanna Robbins
19. 112 Augie Grill
20. 11 Logan Boyett
21. 5 Trevor Noles
22. 79 Kyle Bryant
23. 66 Logan Bearden
24. 95 Derrick Griffin
25. 25 Cole Williams
