St. Amant Displays His Championship Resolve

Experience paid dividends when three champions of American Speed Assn. campaigns put on a spirited 300-lap duel Saturday night around Irwindale Speedway’s banked half-mile oval in the Tires.com 300.

Defending champion Gary St. Amant, 39, pulled away in the final laps to turn back 1997 champion Kevin Cywinski, who will turn 36 next week, and pole-sitter Butch Miller, 48, a four-time ASA champion.

An enthusiastic crowd of 5,150 was on hand to witness the first West Coast appearance of the Midwestern stock car series. The race was televised nationally.

St. Amant and Cywinski, each in Chevrolets, battled through most of the final 100 laps side by side with St. Amant taking the high groove and Cywinski the lower, shorter route. On Lap 252, Cywinski squeezed ahead in front of the grandstands, but could hold it only four laps before St. Amant came flying off the fourth corner to regain the lead for keeps.

“Before the race, I talked with Dan Holtz, a super late model driver here, and he told me about running the outside groove, so I moved up high,” St. Amant said. “But what really won the race for us was our pit stop strategy. It was awesome.”

St. Amant was the only driver among the leaders to make only one pit stop as most cars pitted during one or more of the 11 yellow caution flag periods.

“The more I ran on the bottom, the more it heated up the tires,” Cywinski said. “There toward the end, once Gary got by me, I had no chance of catching him.”

St. Amant’s fastest lap was 296 when he ran 98.250 mph. His margin at the end of the 2-hour, 17-minute race was .923 seconds, good for a winner’s check of $23,580.

Two rookies, Canadian Scott Fraser and Tim Jedrzejek, finished fourth and fifth, with Jedrzejek making the biggest move, coming from 31st position in a Pontiac.

Fourteen cars finished on the lead lap with 29, many of which had been involved in minor accidents, running at the end. Because of the 89 laps run under the caution flag, St. Amant’s winning speed was 65.316 mph.

Miller, who won the pole in a Pontiac with a 100.874 mph lap, lost the lead to Cywinski the first time around the track and never led a lap.

“It seemed like we pitted a dozen times and we weren’t going anywhere until toward the end of the race when there were a lot of yellows,” said the veteran campaigner who returned to ASA racing last year after forays into NASCAR Busch Grand National and Craftsman Truck series. “We were great on short runs--four or five laps--so every time there was a yellow I passed a bunch of guys on the restart, but when we had to go longer than that, we couldn’t pass anyone.”

Joey Clanton, who won the ASA opening race last month at St. Augustine, Fla., ran in the top five for the first 115 laps before getting caught in tight quarters with a lapped racer, Craig Smith, and his Chevrolet wound up being towed in.

Brandon Miller, 19, of Rancho Santa Fe, the lone Californian in the race, struggled in the rear for the first 200 laps and when he began to move up, he sideswiped the fourth turn wall and wound up 33rd--the last car running at the end.