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Mike Bennett
South Buxton Raceway Public Relations

 As his race team was closing up the No. 88 hauler after Saturday night’s races, a well-wisher asked Andrew Reaume if he was “just toying with him.”

“No, I was doing everything I could … I was racing him hard, he wasn’t giving me anything,” Reaume replied.

The ‘he’ Reaume was referring to was Kirk Hooker, who was less than two laps away from his first feature win since 2007.

Instead, Hooker had to settle for a second-place finish as he watched Reaume rally to win his ninth straight UMP Late Model regular season feature at South Buxton Raceway.

It was Reaume’s fourth feature win in four Ultimate Sandblasting & Coatings UMP Late Model features this season, after winning the final five features - including the season championship race - in 2008.

Two other drivers made return trips to Victory Lane on Saturday - Chris Van De Wiele in the Schinkel’s Gourmet Meats UMP Modifieds for the third time and Gary Vyse in the Sun Parlour Trailers Sport Stocks for a second time.

Brandon Windsor won his first Four Seasons Driver Education Comp 4 feature of the season.

Saturday was the first of two Kids Nights for the season, co-sponsored by Dor-Co Garage Doors, Timm-Con and Burger King. The next Kids Night is Aug. 8, presented by Country View Golf Course and McDonalds Restaurants.

For more pictures by James MacDonald from Saturday’s action, please go to ‘Photos’ under the Multimedia icon.

Ultimate Sandblasting & Coatings UMP Late Models

 Wallaceburg’s Mike Lewis and Chatham’s Gregg Haskell took turns leading the early laps, just as they did back on June 6 when Brad Authier eventually won his first feature since 2007.

It looked like déjà vu, this time with Hooker stalking Lewis and Haskell.

Hooker moved into third place on lap seven, took second from Lewis a lap later and then passed Haskell for the lead on lap 10.

But Hooker still had to deal with one more car.

“Drew was supposed to go to Oakshade tonight, but he inadvertently wound up somewhere else!”  Hooker laughed, as Reaume raced at Eldora the night Authier won his feature but was at his hometown track on Saturday.

“Me and Andrew had an awesome race,” Hooker said. “He’s got that bar up there so high, he’s hard to beat.”

Hooker managed to hold off Reaume for 13 laps before losing the lead coming out of turn two to take the white flag.

“He was running good on the top, he was getting good runs off the corners,” Reaume said of Hooker.

 ”When we got beside that lapped car, I saw him (Hooker) go in the middle and I knew he’d push up a bit.

“I knew that was the time I had to go.”

Hooker tried to run Reaume’s line, a strategy that worked until his late encounter with a lapped car.

“But that’s a racing deal,” Hooker said of his misfortune.

 ”I knew not to go to the bottom because if he got up top, I was done.”

Hooker was satisfied with his strongest performance of the season as he believes the race team is headed in the right direction.

“The Country View car was running good, it’s going to come,” he said.

What’s it going to take for Hooker to get back to Victory Lane?

“Shorten the race!” he smiled, just as Reaume stopped by the Hooker hauler.

Dale Glassford finished third, while Haskell came home fourth and Brett Reaume fifth.

Hooker and Andrew Reaume won the heats while Jim Dale Jr. took the pursuit - the first checkered in either class for the double-duty driver.

Schinkel’s Gourmet Meats UMP Modifieds

 Even though Chris Van De Wiele scratched from the heat race and was the first car eliminated in the pursuit, he was confident he would wind up in Victory Lane in the feature.

“The car was great (in the feature). We had ignition problems but got that straightened out,” he said of his early woes.

“But the big thing we did was change tires at the last minute,” he said.

“We decided to go to the soft tires and that was the right call because there was still some moisture in the track.”

The first half of the race saw Merlin’s Brad McLeod lead Belle River’s Mario Toniolo and Woodslee’s Clayton Smith around the ‘D’.

But after a restart from a caution on lap 11, Van De Wiele threaded the needle to get by both Toniolo and Smith. Two laps later, he passed McLeod for the lead.

“They got a little crossed up and I just drove right through the middle of them,” he said of his pass to move into second.

The Coulters overtook McLeod to move into the top three but neither Justin - who won the June 13 feature - nor his father Curtis - the June 6 feature winner - could reel in Van De Wiele.

“I never saw anyone … I was pretty sure I had a good lead,” Van De Wiele said.

C.J. Field of Chatham finished fourth while Smith came home fifth. McLeod wound up 10^th as he went to the pits late in the race.

The Modifieds will run the second leg of the Outhouse Image & Design UMP Summer Sizzler this Saturday. Tim Richardson of Tilbury won the feature at Ohsweken on June 19 and will be at South Buxton to go for the sweep. The race pays $1,000 to win and there is a $500 bonus for the best overall finisher from the two tracks.

 Sun Parlour Trailer Sport Stocks

 Gary Vyse became the first two-time feature winner in the Sun Parlour Sports Stocks.

The Wallaceburg driver started deep in the field but quickly moved through the pack. He took the lead on lap eight and led the final 12 circuits.

“It feels awesome,” said Vyse, who has won two of the season’s first five features after winning just once in 2008.

“We’ve got the car figured out on dry tracks. We don’t have the tacky track figured out yet, we had nothing in the heat and pursuit.

“We were pretty happy when it dried out for the feature.”

Vyse was able to maintain a comfortable lead over the final 12 laps, as second-place Eric Vanderiviere of Chatham was unable to mount a challenge.

Louis Clements and Ken Morrison, both of Chatham, finished third and fourth.

The top four finishers have combined to win the five feature races run this season. Ironically, they finished in the top four in the June 13 feature as well, which was won by Clements and followed by Vyse, Vanderiviere and Morrison. 

Merlin’s Eren Vanderiviere, who led five early laps, finished fifth.

The feature was delayed for almost an hour because of a fire that destroyed the No. 32 car of Kingsville’s Jim Ellis.

Ellis was exiting turn two on the sixth lap when the drive shaft broke and pierced the fuel cell.

He pulled the car onto the infield and quickly escaped just seconds before it became fully engulfed.

“My back felt warm and I could hear the crowd in the pits yelling, ‘fire, fire, fire’, then I saw the flames in the right rear,” Ellis said.

“I just stayed calm, got the belts off and window net down and got out as fast as I could.”

Amazingly, Ellis was not injured.

Vyse was stunned by the size of the fire.

“I’ve never seen one burn like that before … I couldn’t believe the fire lasted that long,” he said.

“It affected all of us,” he continued. “You’re worried about what was going on and what happened to the driver.”

Four Seasons Driver Education Comp 4s

 Brandon Windsor took advantage of disciplinary action dealt to the division’s top two drivers to win his first feature of the season and move to the top of the point standings.

Windsor, who started at the back of the16-car field, took the lead with four laps to go to win the second career feature race of his four-year career. He won the mid-season championship last July.

Windsor went into the night third in the standings but had an opportunity for a huge points gain when Cottam’s Denis DeSerrano and Charing Cross’ Nate McNally were parked for the feature for unsportsmanlike conduct in the pursuit race.

“When I heard what happened to the 8 (McNally) and 69 (DeSerrano), I knew I had a pretty decent chance to make up some points, so I wanted to keep my nose clean,” Windsor said.

The Leamington driver went into the night 31 points off the lead and came out tied for the lead with DeSerrano with 257 points. McNally fell from nine points off the lead to fourth place, 13 points behind the co-leaders.

DeSerrano and McNally were penalized for deliberately hitting each other and bringing out the caution as they stopped at the entrance to pit road after being eliminated in the pursuit race.

Windsor had his own problems after his car was damaged in a heat-race collision.

 ”We tore off the front hoop, had to borrow a rad from the DeSerranos and ripped off the damaged sheet metal,” he said.

 ”With all of the beating and banging going on out there, I just wanted to take it easy,” Windsor said of his ride from the back to the front in the feature.

“I found a couple of good holes and tried to stay out of trouble, that was the big thing.”

 Patrick Lajeunesse of Essex led the first 10 laps. Windsor moved into second place on lap seven and brought Cottam’s Rob Quick in tow.

On lap 11, the leaders went three-wide through turns one and two, with Windsor emerging as the leader.

“I was going back and forth on Patrick, inside and outside, but when he went high (into turn one), I tried to tuck under him,” Windsor said.

 ”I saw Quick out of the corner of my eye go even higher, so I just tried to keep it steady and get out of the corner clean.”

Windsor held off Quick over the final four laps to win his second career feature, his first since last year’s mid-season championship.

Kingsville’s Norm DeSerrano finished third while Windsor’s Shawn Nelson was fourth and Chatham’s Rick Balasin, who ran second for the first half of race, came home fifth. Lajeunesse faded to an eighth-place finish.

Clinton Van Dyk and Denis DeSerrano won the heats while Norm DeSerrano took the pursuit.

 Pit Notes

 * Doris Lajeunesse and Jim Dale Jr. saw their top-five feature finish streaks come to an end. Lajeunesse was sixth in the Sport Stocks feature, the first time he finished out of the top five. Dale Jr. posted a DNF in the Modified feature after finishing second in all four previous features.

Four drivers have top five finishes in all five features - Dale Glassford in the Late Models, Chris Van De Wiele in the Modifieds, Louis Clements in the Sport Stocks and Brandon Windsor in the Comp 4s.

Denis DeSerrano has top-fives in all four of his Comp 4 features.

* Reaume has nine checkered flags in 10 races - four features, three heats and two dashes. His only race he didn’t win was in his June 13 heat when he drove Joe Field’s No. 4 car.

Reaume’s feature win streak is actually 10 straight, as he also drove Louis Clements’ Sport Stock to victory last August.

* Reaume will be a guest on Race Time Radio this week, with co-hosts Joe Chisholm and Bob Sanders.

Go to racetimeradio.com for tonight’s (Monday) live broadcast at 8 p.m. as well as times for rebroadcasts throughout the week.

* Chris Van De Wiele will be the guest on Pit Pass with host George Brooks on Country 92.9 FM/630 AM CFCO this Friday at 6:40 p.m. and Saturday at 10:40 a.m.

* There will be a second memorial race on Signs By Design Night on July 11.

Along with the third annual Rick Haskell Memorial Race for the Late Models, the Comp 4s will run the Cory Schives Memorial Race.

An anonymous race fan was so moved by the tribute to Cory on June 13 at South Buxton, he donated cash to the Shawn Jones race team to purchase a memorial trophy in his honour.

Cory passed away June 8, just three days after his 17^th birthday.

* Patrick Haskell made his return in the RH22 Late Model on Saturday, finishing seventh in the 14-car feature and fifth in his heat.

Jay Haskell hopes to have his RH94 ready for this Saturday, as all three Haskell brothers will race in their father’s memorial.