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It wasn\u2019t a tremendous surprise to anyone when Chris Perley of Amesbury, MA pulled the Vic Miller 11 (Plaistow, NH) into victory lane on Sunday at Thompson Speedway. After all he\u2019d been there eight times before. His first World Series ISMA 50 win came on Oct. 15, 2000 and he\u2019s only been out of the winner\u2019s circle at that Connecticut oval three times since. He only took seven laps to move into the frontrunner spot from his 11th place starting position. His complete domination of the Super Modified portion of the famous Thompson World Series is undeniable, as the record books show, but Perley himself can\u2019t quite explain why.<\/p>\n
He shook his head in victory lane and admitted, \u201cI don\u2019t think the domination here has a lot to do with me. Every time we unload here I just can\u2019t believe it. I just sit in the car and drive it. The car seems to love it here. I don\u2019t know what to say really. We don\u2019t break down. The crew gives me an awesome car. Thompson has been just great to come to every year. I kind of wish we came here more often but I wouldn\u2019t want to take anything away from what we have right now. I don\u2019t want to wear it out. It\u2019s just incredible. Happy to see the weather came out great this weekend and all the fans who all came out to see us. I\u2019m happy my family made it too. It\u2019s just that I have a great car, great sponsors, great motors for a great track and it\u2019s a great day. Congratulations to my car owner Vic Miller on his seventh ISMA car owner title. It was great to race for him when I could this year and it\u2019s been great every year. You just can\u2019t beat all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having an exciting run to finish second was Raymond, NH\u2019s Jeff Locke who got to lead one lap before the 11 stormed by. Locke had some strong challenges, especially toward the end of the 50-lapper from Timmy Jedrzejek of Ohio, but he held onto the runner-up spot. He said after the race, \u201cThis was awesome. I have to thank Richard (Witkum). The car was really good. I didn\u2019t have a whole lot for Chris. I could stay with him but that was about it. Congratulations to him and the whole team. They obviously have this place figured out. I\u2019m really happy to come home second. I have to thank my father and my family for sticking with me. This is a great finish to a pretty crummy year for us. I\u2019m very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also very happy was third place finisher, Jedrzejek, who finished up a pretty good year with his new car owner Dan Soule (Clay, NY). \u201cThis was a real good run for us. The whole team did a great job today. We adjust yesterday and I hadn\u2019t been to this place in ten or twelve years. So we\u2019re pleased with what we have as a crew. We started off the race a little slow and I think I dropped back maybe to tenth or so. Then the car started to come to me and we weren\u2019t so concerned about being fast at the start of the race but we knew we had to be fast at the end. I thought Jeff and I had a pretty good battle for a while there for second. I just couldn\u2019t hold it with him. I\u2019d get there on those last couple restarts and he\u2019d just pull back around me on the next lap and then I couldn\u2019t do anything after that. Congratulations to Chris and Jeff for first and second and we\u2019ll go happily home to Ohio with third.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canadian Craig Rayvals (Brockville, Ont.) had the pole for the ISMA 50 and took advantage of the spot to take the early lead but on lap 7 the 37 of Locke took over and only one lap later Perley absconded with the point and the eventual win. Locke would have to contend with a strong runner Jon Gambuti in his 14, a former Cicconi-owned machine. Behind Jon were the likes of Rob Summers (Vernon, CT), Rayvals, Mike Lichty, Johnny Benson, Jedrzejek and Russ Wood (Pelham, NH). Dave Sanborn, in the Lane 9, flew the first yellow on lap 15 with several pit stops made in the ensuing slowdown by Ben Seitz (Bourne, MA), Brandon Bellinger and then Johnny Benson Jr. Benson had unintentionally tagged his own teammate Lichty, cutting a tire.<\/p>\n
Those last couple of restarts bunched the field and although Perley pulled away cleanly, some torrid racing ensued between Locke and Jedrzejek and Lichty and Witkum, which continued to race end. At the checkered Perley had done it again, picking up his fifth in a row with Locke, Jedrzejek, Lichty and Ed Witkum (Westford, MA) the top five.<\/p>\n
Vic Miller, whose 11 car was credited with 7 wins in 2011 thanks to Perley and Lou Cicconi, has clinched the ISMA Car Owner of the year title, his seventh. He said briefly amidst the chaos of pits at tech, \u201cThat was a great run Chris had here today. I finished up a good year. I wish he could have run all the races this year, but we had a bunch of different guys that really helped out like Louie Cicconi, Vern Romanoski and Otto Sitterly, so it was a great year. We\u2019re really happy. It couldn\u2019t have been better. And, it\u2019s great to get a 7th car owner title.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his hauler, Russ Wood also acknowledged what should be his 8th ISMA Driver Championship and giving his car owner Jeff Holbrook a runner-up spot in the Car Owner division. \u201cWe finished sixth today and we did what we had to do. Everybody did a good job and we\u2019re just happy to get the driver\u2019s points deal. Congratulations to Chris and Vic. They had a really super year. That\u2019s about it. It\u2019s over and done with and now we relax. It\u2019s a little odd to be the driver champion and have someone else be the owner champion but it\u2019s a team sport and even though it\u2019s a driver\u2019s championship, this team is 100 percent behind it. So it is what it is. Even though we made the sacrifice to go to all the races, we did well and this is the end result. We\u2019ll take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Summary ISMA Event #14. Thompson Sunoco World Series
\nHeat 1: Chris Perley, Johnny Benson, Timmy Jedrzejek, Craig Rayvals, Jamie Timmons, Ray Graham, Jr., Dave Duggan, Brian Sobus, Joey Scanlon (dnf).
\nHeat 2: Jeff Locke, Jon Gambuti, Russ Wood, Mike Lichty, Mark Sammut, Dave Sanborn Moe Lilje, Bob Bond, Kody Graham
\nHeat 3: Ben Seitz, Rob Summers, Jon McKennedy, Bob Dawson, Lou Cicconi, Brandon Bellinger, Justin Belfiore, Eddie Witkum and Dan Bowes (last 2 dns).
\nISMA 50: 1. Chris Perley (11), 2. Jeff Locke (37), 3. Timmy Jedrzejek (32), 4. Mike Lichty (84), 5. Eddie Witkum Jr. (97), 6. Russ Wood (29), 7. Mark Sammut (78), 8. Joey Scanlon (88), 9. Jon Gambuti (14), 10. Dan Bowes (18), 11. Craig Rayvals (04), 12. Kody Graham (21), 13. Jamie Timmons (27), 14. Brian Sobus (79x), 15. Brandon Bellinger (02), 16. Dave Duggan (51), 17. Moe Lilje (08), 18. Jon McKennedy (79), 19. Bobby Dawson (28), 20. Rob Summers (35), 21. Johnny Benson Jr. (74), 22. Ray Graham Jr. (90), 23. Bobby Bond (25), 24. Ben Seitz (17), 25. Dave Sanborn (9), 26. Lou Cicconi (66).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It wasn\u2019t a tremendous surprise to anyone when Chris Perley of Amesbury, MA pulled the Vic Miller 11 (Plaistow, NH) into victory lane on Sunday at Thompson Speedway. After all he\u2019d been there eight times before. His first World Series ISMA 50 win came on Oct. 15, 2000 and he\u2019s only been out of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[196,4163,41],"tags":[15816,15774],"class_list":["post-8344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-modified","category-thompson","tag-isma","tag-thompson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}