STAFFORD – Cory DiMatteo heard the whispers around the track of people saying he was struggling. Friday the Farmington drivers silenced those folks.
DiMatteo held off the challenges of Marcello Rufrano over the closing laps to win the 40-lap SK Modified feature Friday at Stafford.
“We’ve had a rough couple weeks,” DiMatteo said. “Last week we got wrecked in the heat race and we bounced back. I heard for like three weeks in a row how badly we were struggling. And it’s like, nothing we could do about it. But that was a fun race. Hat’s off to [Rufrano], he ran me pretty clean. Can’t ask for anything more than that.”
It was the first victory of the season for DiMatteo and his fourth overall in the division.
Rufrano, of North Haven, finished second after a hard wreck last week.
“It’s amazing,” Rufrano said. “This isn’t even the same race car we came here with last week. This thing was actually collecting dust in our garage. We didn’t know what we were going to do with it. It was kind of in limbo. We didn’t know if we were going to sell it our put it together for something. … I got beat by the guy who is fixing my chassis. I can’t thank everyone else enough for racing me clean tonight. That was good hard racing.”
Stephen Kopcik of Newtown was third.
“Goes without saying, I think we’re the class of the field,” Kopcik said.
Keith Rocco went to the lead past Tyler Leary at the green flag, but Leary battled back to regain the lead off of turn four before the first lap was completed.
On lap four Rocco got back by Leary for the lead into turn three, just as DiMatteo was moving into third behind them,.
On lap six DiMatteo went under Leary to take over second. Caution flew on lap eight when fourth place Leary and fifth place Noah Korner made contact and went through the backstretch grass.
On the lap eight restart it was DiMatteo using the outside lane off of turn two to power by Rocco for the lead.
With DiMatteo leading Rufrano and Arute in third, contact between Rocco and Puleo for fifth place on the backstretch sent Rocco spinning on lap 28.
On the restart it was DiMatteo holding off the challenge of Rufrano with Mikey Flynn going from sixth to third.
Caution flew once again on lap 34 for the spinning car of Wesley Prucker near the rear of the field.
On the restart DiMatteo was able to get the jump, leaving Rufranpo battling with Flynn for third.
By lap 38 Rufrano had clawed back to the bumper of DiMatteo.
“I wasn’t going to wreck him,” Rufrano said. “I definitely think we were better there, but not much else I could do.”
Congrats to Cory and the #11 team for your feature win. Good job
I think Rocco needs to dust off the 57 and bring it back again. It just does not seem to be working well with the 22. Yes he has had some bad luck .Same thing happened last year with Hodgdon