STAFFORD – Nobody will mistake Woody Pitkat’s Late Model championship photos from Stafford Motor Speedway on Sunday as doctored up glamour shots.
Woody Pitkat celebrates his Late Model championship Sunday at Stafford Speedway (Photo: Nicholas Teto)
After a first lap wreck in the 30-lap Late Model feature, an annoyed Pitkat drove a mangled car to victory lane after the event to celebrate his second championship in the division.
Pitkat won his first Late Model title at Stafford in 2006.
Luckily for Pitkat, he came into Sunday with a virtually insurmountable lead over Mike Quintiliano
Essentially Pitkat needed only to take the green flag to start Sunday’s event to clinch his title. He didn’t do much more than that before disaster struck.
Half a lap into the race contact with Adam Gray sent Pitkat hard into the wall. It proved the crescendo of a simmering battle feud between the two drivers over the last few events.
After getting wrecked Pitkat then drove hard into Gray’s car on the track under caution. The two also had issues during the Late Model race two weeks ago at Stafford.
“The meatball from two weeks ago just turned into a full sized grinder this week,” Pitkat said. “That’s what he likes to do, he likes to Enduro race, that’s fine. That’s what he’ll be every week is an Enduro driver and we’ll all just keep moving up the ladder.”
It was the first championship for Pitkat’s Billy Snow owned race team.
“They deserved it,” Pitkat said. “The last couple years they’ve been close and we’ve had some stuff happen throughout the season.”
Pitkat’s celebratory mood was tempered immensely though by the actions of Gray on the first lap.
“That’s malicious,” Pitkat said. “It’s intent to injure, and they let him stay on the track. Honestly, they better do something about that. It’s going to be a lonely banquet and they’re not going to be very happy. They can sell the front row tickets to Adam Gray because he should have been parked after that. He blatantly put me in the fence off of [turn] two.
“I would have started in the back if I knew he was going to do some stupid bonehead move like that. He would have been the bigger man to go out there and beat me, but he can’t because I just drive by him every week. If that’s what he wants to do, put me in the fence, congratulations, I’ll sell him five tickets to the banquet and he can sit at the front table.”
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