CONCORD, N.C. — Ryan Preece’s three-year quest for victory at Charlotte Motor Speedway is finally over.
Preece may have qualified ninth, but he came on strong during the final third of the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour season finale Thursday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, passing four-time series champion George Brunnhoelzl III with 48 laps to go and never looking back en route to victory lane.
The former NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion and current NASCAR XFINITY Series regular started on the front row in each of the last three years for the NWSMT Charlotte finale, but had two mechanical failures derail his efforts in 2013 and 2014 and finished second last year to Brunnhoelzl.
This time, however, it was Preece’s night at long last — as he celebrated his third career Southern Tour victory and first of the season.
“Man, this is pretty special,” Preece said in victory lane. “The first time I ran here for Gary Putnam and Kevin ‘Bono’ Manion we had a brake failure inside of 10 laps to go and when I drove my family car here (three) years ago, we blew the motor and couldn’t finish the deal either … so we’ve had a lot of heartbreakers at this track.”
“When the caution came out, I’m thinking ‘Man, I hope I saved enough with these guys behind me,’ but this car really did well on the longer runs. It took two or three laps to fire off, but once it did we were solid. Gary Putnam’s good for making a car last and he definitely did that tonight.”
The surprise of the night was Preece’s pass for the lead, which came on the outside lane of a flat race track that most of the Southern Tour drivers call “nearly impossible” to pass on.
“Georgie had a really good car tonight … and I think we just had more forward drive than he did, with a little more stability at the end of the race there. I don’t think he expected me to really commit to the outside; I think he more or less expected me to dive underneath him and we caught him off-guard a little bit there. It was a cool move and I’m happy to finally be here (in victory lane).”
Brunnhoelzl started from the pole and quickly jumped out to the early lead, but an opening lap caution that swept up outside polesitter Kyle Ebersole among the casualties shuffled up the top runners and gave invader Ryan Preece an early shot to pounce after qualifying sixth.
The incident moved Preece up to the inside of row two, and he quickly moved into second on the lap six restart, giving chase to Brunnhoelzl out front. A torrid stretch from laps 15 to 20 saw Preece give several shots to Brunnhoelzl’s back nerf bar — to no avail.
A spinning Bryan Dauzat brought the yellow out for the second time a lap later, followed by A.J. Winstead’s date with the wall on lap 33 that triggered a swath of trouble in the latter stages of the first third.
Kyle Bonsignore also spun to slow the pace on lap 45 and Jeremy Gerstner looped it battling for third place on lap 52 before a longer green flag run finally broke out. Once the pace picked up on the 58th round, green flag conditions remained on the quarter-mile for 74 circuits as Brunnhoelzl and Preece gapped James Civali by three seconds.
At halfway, Brunnhoelzl started to pick up the pace, leading by a half second over Preece with Civali, Danny Bohn, Bobby Measmer Jr., Burt Myers and Jason Myers all more than four seconds in arrears.
However, Preece was not done.
With 55 laps to go, he cut a seven-tenth of a second gap down to nothing as he latched onto Brunnhoelzl’s rear bumper in lap traffic, and eight laps later made a power move around the outside to take the lead exiting turn four.
From there, he quickly opened up a sizeable lead, but had to defend it one final time after Dalton Baldwin’s spin with 19 laps remaining set up a late-race dash for glory.
Though Brunnhoelzl beat him to the line to lead at lap 137, Preece never faltered on the bottom of the race track, powering back past exiting turn two and leading the final 13 laps uncontested.
Bruunhoelzl finished second ahead of Civali, Bohn and Measmer.
