Holman Claims Third Victory At Southern National

Last Saturday night, the 2014 X-1R Pro Cup Championship Series kicked off at the Southern National Motorsports Park, with Caleb Holman winning the Golden Leaf 200 without so much as breaking a sweat. From lap 51, the Virginia driver took the lead from Brian Keselowski; the series newcomer had paced the field in the earlier laps after picking up his first career MAHLE pole award in qualifying. After multiple taps to his bumper from Holman, Keselowski had to relinquish command of the field to Holman who had the better ride of the race.

Holman’s third victory of the season extends his lead to seven points ahead of rival, JP Morgan. In the Edelbrock Victory Lane, Holman said, “We had a real good car all day. I could tell in the first practice I was going to have something I could really race with. We’ve had a little stretch of bad luck here lately, so we knew with the championship series coming up we had to be on our game and stay out of trouble. Tonight we did that...”

Behind Holman, several battles played out, with the biggest one happening between Reid Wilson, whose aggressive driving sent Brady Boswell’s #2 machine into a lazy spin exiting turn four. Boswell was put a lap down when he could not regain momentum fast enough and Wilson was relegated to the rear of the field as penalty.

Still disgruntled, Boswell, who was the only car at the time in position for the lucky dog, hooked Wilson’s ride after the restart and sent it crashing into the wall, driver’s side first - the sophomore driver was knocked out and transported to a medical facility, but was released later. Boswell was parked by race officials.

The last 100 laps was less eventful, although Gus Dean attempted to challenge Holman with twenty laps to go. Despite his efforts to close in to within a car’s length of Holman, Dean finally took the runner-up position. Rounding out the podium was rookie Dough Barnes Jr with the best finish of his career, improving on his fourth place finish in the last race at Motor Mile.