CONCORD, N.C. – Jon McKennedy rallied back late in Saturday’s caution-filled 16th annual John Blewett III Memorial North-South Shootout and held off a final-lap charge from Matt Hirschman to take down the $10,000 victory at Concord Speedway.
McKennedy, who started from the pole and led uncontested until his pit stop at lap 43, only ran outside the top five for 13 of the 125 laps in the crown-jewel tour-type modified event. However, it wasn’t until a restart with 21 to go that he truly retook command of the race.
Driving Tommy Baldwin’s No. 7ny, McKennedy soared around the outside of leader Andy Seuss when the green flag waved for the final time and never looked in his mirrors again. He raced away from his closest pursuers and then kept Hirschman at bay in the final half-mile en route to the win.
Saturday’s performance created a bookend to the season for McKennedy, who opened the year with a NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour victory at Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Speedway in Baldwin’s car and then closed it with a similar win at Concord under the lights.
“I’ve won a lot of races in my career, up and down the East Coast, but this is one of the biggest,” McKennedy noted. “There was a lot of good competition here today; we had almost 30 cars and over half of them were really strong drivers. This is just a neat deal, though, with it being the Blewett Memorial … he was a hell of a wheelman. I’m sure he’s looking down smiling tonight.
“Tommy gave me a great car; all weekend we were really fast,” he added. “Andy was really fast, and I knew that my best chance to get him was on that restart. I had to clear him (going) into (turn) one, otherwise he was strong through the dogleg. After that I looked straight out the front of the car.”
McKennedy’s foe in the closing laps was six-time event winner Hirschman, who made his final stop for fresh tires after a red-flag period with 38 to go. He came off pit road in 18th place, but methodically started picking off cars one by one and was in position to slip through a multi-car accident that sparked the final stoppage of the night on lap 104.
Avoiding the mayhem that ultimately blocked the track on the frontstretch, Hirschman found himself lined up seventh for the 21-lap sprint to the finish and wasted no time moving into position to capitalize.
He cracked the top five with 15 to go and took just eight more laps to crack the podium, passing Andy Seuss for third with seven rounds remaining. Hirschman got held up trying to dispatch second-running Jimmy Blewett and couldn’t secure the runner-up spot until three to go.
By then, McKennedy was just far enough out in front to stay there, and though Hirschman carved a near one-second gap into shreds in the closing moments, he fell a car length short at the checkered flag.
After the race, Hirschman noted that there wasn’t one instance that cost him his seventh North-South Shootout trophy, but that it was “a lot of little things” that just added up to become insurmountable.
“That didn’t work out the way that I had planned,” lamented Hirschman. “Even after we got our tires, there were just a few times that the breaks didn’t go my way and we were stalled too many times to be able to get all the way back through there in time.
“You can say that I’d have won it if I’d had a few more laps, but at the end of the day, 125 is the race and we just came up a little bit short.”
Blewett hung on to finish third in the race named in honor of his brother, John Blewett III, with John Smith trailing close behind in fourth.
After leading 41 laps during the middle portions of the race, Seuss faded back to fifth in the end.
The marathon race was slowed by a myriad of incidents, including four red-flag periods. The 125-lap distance took three hours to complete and only 12 of the 28 starters finished on the lead lap.
The finish:
Jon McKennedy, Matt Hirschman, Jimmy Blewett, John Smith, Andy Seuss, Bobby Measmer Jr., Anthony Nocella, Todd Owen, Patrick Emerling, James Civali, Burt Myers, George Brunnhoelzl III, Jimmy Zacharias, Daniel Yates, Sammy Rameau, Gary Putnam, Chase Dowling, Calvin Carroll, Chuck Hossfeld, Brandon Ward, Cameron Sontag, Mike Norman, Jeremy Gerstner, Jeff Fultz, Chris Finocchario, Ron Silk, Jason Myers, Brian Loftin.
