The race got off to a sluggish start, with a six-car crash marring the opening lap as the field scrambled wildly from fifth on back, but from there Coby asserted his dominance despite heavy pressure from defending race winner Ryan Preece in the early going.

A spinning Tomaino set up a lap 59 restart, in which Preece tried to take the lead from Coby on the outside but got body-checked entering turn three, sliding him back to second once again.

But it was a caution on lap 79, when Jeremy Gerstner shredded a left front tire, that proved to be Preece’s undoing.

He pulled to the pits less than a lap later, a shattered left-front brake rotor ending his quest for a second-straight Charlotte victory.

“We had the rotor explode in the left front … and this place isn’t very good without brakes, so it made it a tough day,” said Preece. “There’s nothing you can do. You’re going from however many miles an hour to a slow pace really quickly, so you have to use them. I tried to conserve, but it just didn’t hold up on us tonight.”

Bohn picked up the mantle from there, powering around Coby’s outside on the next restart at lap 86 and pulling away with what Coby later called “a winning move” before the final showdown in traffic swung Coby’s way.

A dejected Bohn had to settle for second, repeating a mantra after the race that “it stinks to lose.”

“If I knew it was going to be three-wide, I wouldn’t have gone out there,” Bohn said. “(Coby) put the pressure on me, which is what he needed to do … and he ran me clean. The lapped cars went two-wide and put me out there in the third groove and there was nothing out there.”

“You got to do what you got to do, and I couldn’t run behind lapped cars. He forced me to make a move and it just didn’t work out. Second place is nothing to be ashamed of; we showed them that we were here and they knew we were here. It stinks to lose, obviously, but hopefully next time the luck will be on our side.”

Coby and Bohn were the only two cars officially on the lead lap at the checkered flag.

2017 Sunoco Rookie of the Year Calvin Carroll finished a career-best third, followed by Tomaino and Bobby Measmer Jr.

NASCAR K&N Pro Series West rookie Derek Kraus came home sixth, three laps down, in his tour-type modified debut after being swept up in the opening lap carnage.

The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour concludes its 2017 season with the Sunoco World Series of Racing at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park, Oct. 14-15.

Full race results can be viewed on the next page…