Landen Lewis Takes Dominant Win in Crash-Filled CARS Tour LMSC Race at Wilkesboro

On the second night of North Wilkesboro weekend, the CARS Tour brought to us another butt-kicking. This one was courtesy of Landen Lewis, who took the win in Friday night’s zMAX CARS Tour Late Model Stock Window World 100 at the iconic 0.625-mile short track.

Lewis, 19, led every lap from the pole position to score his second consecutive CARS Tour LMSC victory, and he topped 14-year-old Tristan McKee, a Spire Motorsports development driver, by 0.918 seconds to capture the win.

The Kevin Harvick Inc. racer also took over the CARS Tour Late Model Stock point lead on Friday night with the emphatic victory. After raising his fists to the electric crowd on hand, Lewis was emotional.

“Speechless. That’s what I am right now,” Lewis said, choking back tears. “This one hits hard. These guys have worked their butts off. I’m there every day with them, just grinding it out, trying to make these race cars the best they are. Man, the last two [races], I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve really got this thing rolling.”

Lewis thanked his entire crew and the Harvick family for the opportunity, and he still feels like he has to pinch himself as he can’t believe he is behind the wheel of a Kevin Harvick Inc. race car each week.

“Miles, all my crew guys, for everything they do, Kevin and Delana [Harvick], Keelan, and Piper. Again, if I told you two years ago I’d be in this spot, I’d have told everyone you’re crazy,” Lewis stated. “Rodney Childers, this one hits home for sure for him. He said we get to ride in the elevator together, so I’m ready to do it.”

McKee came up just shy of becoming the youngest winner in CARS Tour Late Model Stock history, but with how the driver is competing as of late, that first win could come any race.

Mini Tyrrell held on to finish third after a great battle with Kaden Honeycutt in the closing laps of the race. This is the third consecutive third-place finish for Tyrrell in Late Model Stock competition at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Carson Loftin rounded out the top-five finishers after he was able to hold off Landon Huffman, who rallied from a 31st-place starting spot, and suffered major damage on Lap 2 to finish sixth.

Huffman, who drove 98 laps without a driver’s side door, says he feels his car was capable of finishing top-five, and possibly could have done more had it not been for an early-race skirmish.

“Yeah, we had the car too. We honestly might have had a car that could have won,” Huffman said to Racing America after the race. “I felt like when I got clear, even with no left side, there early in the race, we were the fastest car on the track for honestly a good portion of that run.”

At the end of the day, Huffman was upset that a miscue by him in qualifying put his team behind the eight-ball, but he’s proud of his Carroll Speedshop team for rallying.

“Disappointed that I qualified bad, that was on me. I overdrive, got a little greedy,” Huffman explained. “We’ve been struggling in qualifying the last couple of weeks, and I feel like for me, I got through [Turns] 1 and 2 really good yesterday, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be money,’ and then I drove it to about to the Tyson sign and then tried to turn too much.”

The race, which was the first CARS Tour event to ever be featured on FS1, was sloppy in the early going.

The biggest moment of the race was a crash on Lap 2, which was triggered when second-place qualifier Lanie Buice made contact with Jake Bollman, while battling for the runner-up spot behind Lewis. The two would crash, and numerous others behind them would pile into the incident.

Buice, who had aspirations of being the first-ever female race winner in CARS Tour Late Model Stock history, will have to wait at least one more race to make history as she was credited with a 32nd-place finish on Friday night.

Along with Buice and Bollman, Dustin Storm, Landon S. Huffman, Sam Butler, Ryan Wilson, and Daniel Silvestri all saw their races come to an end in the Lap 2 crash.

Many drivers felt the rubber laid down by the NASCAR Cup Series cars earlier in the afternoon led to a lot of the early-race chaos, as the CARS Tour machines were getting loose as the rubber was ripped from the track surface by their Hoosier tires.

Next up for the zMAX CARS Tour Late Model Stocks is a date with Langley Speedway in Hampton, Virginia. That race will take place on May 31 and can be streamed on FloRacing.

CARS Tour Late Model Stock Window World 100 Race Results