Faggart capped off his domination of the Legends Car Masters division with his fifth win of the summer, moving into sole possession of fifth on that division’s all-time Shootout win list as well as sealing his first Shootout title.
The former CMS employee passed polesitter and race-long leader Todd Midas on a restart at lap 13 and went on to blitz the field, holding off a last-corner gasp by Mark Green to capture the checkered flag.
“My tires were all gone,” Faggart admitted. “We used them up tonight. With so many restarts and so many heat cycles going into them it was like ice out there. I had a good time, though, and we were blessed to hang on for another win.”
“This championship means a lot. I mean, this is Charlotte Motor Speedway. This is the height of Legend Cars. It doesn’t get any better than this. I worked here when I was a kid, so to be here 30 years later and celebrating this is special. There’s no better feeling.”
Green finished second by less than a car length, followed by multi-time Atlanta Motor Speedway Thursday Thunder titlist Scott Moseley, championship runner-up Carl Cormier and Craig Bruce.
Tyler Truex duplicated Black’s feat of winning the final two races en route to a championship, capturing top honors in the AAA Carolinas Legends Car Semi-Pro division and coming from behind in the last week of competition.
Truex, a welder by trade and the cousin of Coca-Cola 600 winner Martin Truex Jr., was eight points in arrears and third in the standings entering round nine but pulled out victories both Monday and Tuesday to catapult himself into the record books with his first major racing championship.
“It feels awesome,” said Truex, who overhauled Gus Dean and Matt Mead on the way to winning it all. “Like I say every week, I can’t thank (car owner) Joe Ryan Osborne enough. I wanted it bad. I’ve got a lot of guys who are supporting me in this deal and who want to see me succeed, so I wanted to win a championship for them.”
“I knew that Matt and Gus were going to get aggressive and I just wanted to sit back and watch to see what would happen. We didn’t have the car that we had last night but we had enough. This was all about determination. I never would have believed that we could come from 16th in points to win it all, and yet here we are. It’s incredible.”
Dean and Mead appeared to be the favorites entering the night, running first and second for the opening eight laps of the feature, but Mead turned Dean around in turn one fighting for the top spot to send both of them to the rear and erase their championship hopes in an instant.
Truex then took the lead from Jacob Heafner at the 10th round and never looked back, despite a flurry of restarts and a nine-lap dash to the checkered flag.
Mead rallied all the way back to finish second, claiming second in the championship as a result, while Dean was eliminated in a final-lap crash after contact between Heafner and Nolan Pope that resulted in a huge crash on the backstretch.
Grant Winchester, Craig Biryla and Scott Joy rounded out the top five.
