Moments after the 100-lap mark, Sitterly’s race came to a grinding conclusion.

The four-time Classic winner was working around the outside of Jerry Curran as Tim Devendorf made a bonzai move to the inside to try and take the third spot from Sitterly after shooting from sixth to fourth.

Sitterly’s car bounced off of Devendorf’s right side and shot hard into the outside wall in Turn 3, ending his bid for a fifth win in the crown jewel supermodified event.

That set Snyder up on Muldoon’s bumper to kick off the second half, but Snyder could do nothing with the leader and ultimately saw his chances evaporate with 71 to go, when he had an apparent mechanical failure entering Turn 3 that sent him hard into the foam blocks and ended his race.

Devendorf then became the next challenger to do battle with Muldoon, but his chances at victory bit the dust with 56 to go, when he pounded the outside wall in Turn 4 after a mechanical failure of his own, climbed the wall and turned over on the frontstretch to draw the race’s first and only red flag.

While Devendorf climbed out uninjured as another name in a long list of casualties on a tumultuous Classic night, with Chris Perley assuming the runner-up spot behind Muldoon and Shullick quietly running third for a restart with 50 to go.

That last quarter was when the 2017 track champion finally hit the button, surging around the outside of Perley for second a lap after the restart and quickly moving in to pressure Muldoon for the long-awaited win.

After trailing for 10 laps, Shullick took a page out of Josef Newgarden’s Indy car playbook when he forced his way to the inside with 39 to go, banging wheels with Muldoon as he took the lead and finally sealing the deal on “the last race the family had yet to win.”

Chaos reigned behind Shullick in the waning moments, however. A fading Muldoon spun with 19 to go, after a tense battle for fifth with Aric Iosue, and a spin down the backstretch by Iosue on the ensuing restart meant that there was one final 10-lap dash to decide the final order.

As Shullick pulled Perley by three-quarters of a second on the green, Perley faded as his car began to sputter on low fuel.

Ultimately it was Michael Barnes who drove around Perley with four to go, seizing the runner-up spot as Perley ran dry but running out of time to chase down Shullick.

“That was the least amount of fun I’ve ever had for 200 laps here,” lamented Barnes, who ended as the Classic runner-up for the third-straight year. “We screwed up. We should have scuffed the tires. Instead of coming in with two and a half or two and three-quarter inches of stagger, we came in with four … which would have been great for time trials, but didn’t help us in the race.”

“We just had to ride. That’s all I could do. As guys fell out, we made our way forward, and got lucky to finish second. … I was hanging on at the end. I still want to win this thing bad, though. Hopefully next year we’ll have a better shot at it.”

Brandon Bellinger completed the podium in third, notching the best finish by a Bellinger in the Classic since his father Ed Jr.’s fifth and final Classic win in 1994.

61-year-old Joe Gosek came home fourth in his 38th consecutive Classic appearance, with Joey Moriarty completing the top five.

Perley coasted across the line in sixth, the last car on the lead lap at the finish.

Full race results can be viewed on the next page…