Last Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Mike Christopher Jr. was the head turning attention grabber with a 13th place finish in his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut.
Friday the Wolcott driver left the national stage behind to return home for some domination.
Christopher went to the lead early, dominated much of the race and then held on through a pair of late restarts to win the 40-lap SK Modified feature at Stafford.
It was the fourth SK Modified victory of the season and 22nd of his career.
“Restarts at the end, you never know what’s going to happen,” Christopher said. “I had to get better from the first one. … We had a good car, great car. I was kind of saving myself just in case the yellows did fall. Great car. Great bounce back for the team. It’s definitely what we needed.”
Dylan Izzo of Monroe was second.
“The way this season has gone this is just like a win,” Izzo said. “It’s just been wrong place, wrong time or just battling the car, finally to run up front here the whole race.”
Jon Puleo of Branford finished third to take over the points lead with two events remaining. Puleo came into the event sitting second in the points, two behind Mikey Flynn, who finished sixth. Puleo now sits two points ahead of Flynn at the top of the standings.
Christopher went by Izzo for the lead into turn one on lap 11
Izzo battled back in the bottom lane with the pair going side-by-side for two laps before Christopher cleared Izzo on lap 13.
By lap 25 Christopher had checked out by 1.3 seconds over Izzo with Michael Gervais in second.
With Christopher leading by nearly two seconds, caution flew on lap 37 for the spinning cars of Eric Goodale and Ethan Durocher. Christopher controlled on the restart, leaving Izzo to battle with Gervais for second.
Caution flew on lap 38 for the stopped car of Wesley Prucker. Christopher was able to hang on through the final three laps.
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