Super Late Models
Unofficial Results - New Smyrna World Series Night #1
Feb 11, 2023
One race. One win.
It’s hard to imagine a better start to the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing for Derek Griffith. Griffith held off a hard charging Kody Brusso to win the 35-lap Sportsman feature to open proceedings at New Smyrna Speedway before rain halted the evening’s proceedings.
“Hopefully, our bad luck is gone, man," Griffith told Racing America. "I can’t thank Jason Boyd and BoydTech enough for putting this thing together. We did this to have fun. He wants to keep this deal, rent it all year and have some fun.
“I can’t thank him enough and my crew enough for coming down for another long Speedweeks. We’ve been coming down here for a long time. It’s the first time I’ve ever driven a Sportsman, so one-for-one. I’m happy with that.”
If nothing else, wins are important for Griffith to put the 2022 season behind him. Whether it was incidents, mechanical failures, or just bizarre misfortune, very little went the New Hampshire driver’s way last year.
Even on a winning night, such as when he claimed the checkered flag in the Big Block Supermodified portion of Oxford 250 weekend, it came with adversity.
“I’ll take anything I can get, for sure. Especially with the luck last year, it was hard, it was really hard. It seemed like every which way, we had a problem. Even with the win in the Big Block Super, we started off the day with getting run over by the push truck and tearing the wing off. No matter what, we had a bad time.”
There have been no such hiccups so far for Griffith at Speedweeks. Between the win in the Sportsman and a fourth-place qualifying effort in his Super Late Model, it’s been all positive thus far. He’ll be looking for another Sportsman win on Saturday night, when the division races for 50 laps.
“This thing has gone nothing but smooth. We worked on it yesterday and today. We picked up a ton of speed. We’ve got to pick up a little bit more, the 7 [of Kody Brusso] is fast. We’ll see what we’ve got for 50 laps tomorrow, I think we’ve got a good piece.”
Griffith will have to wait one more night to race his Super Late Model at the World Series, but he is optimistic that the car and team are set for a strong Speedweeks.
“For tomorrow, we know where we’re at. It’s so easy to adjust yourself out here too. We just want to make the right choices and move forward with that. With how good it was on old tires in practice, I think we’ll be good.”
UNOFFICIAL RESULTS
SPORTSMAN RACE #1 (35 LAPS)
- Derek Griffith
- Kody Brusso
- Tim Sozio
- Adam Briggs
- Danny Frye
- Matthew Green
- Paige Rogers
- Rich Clouser
- Donovan Ponder
- Jason Vail
- Chris Huntoon
- Michael Cormier
- Dave Werning
- Bill Shea
- George Alexander
- Ron Whaley
