Portenga Rallies Late to Win

Steve Portenga began the Pontiac Wide Track Grand Prix on Saturday in a lousy car. He started 13th on the grid, and didn’t hold out much hope of winning.

But along the way, Portenga managed to sneak a peek at the leaderboard at California Speedway in Fontana and saw that he was eighth. When he finally realized the leaders were in front of him, instead of getting ready to put him a lap down, Portenga got racy.

And then Portenga blew away the field, including Winston Cup regular Ken Schrader, to win for the fourth time in his career and move into the lead for the NASCAR Winston West Series title.

“I was perfectly comfortable finishing there [in eighth], pretty content,” Portenga said. “It would be pretty good for the points, a top 10, it’s a pretty prestigious place. But I kept mashing the gas pedal.”

Portenga, from Sparks, Nev., didn’t emerge as a serious player until after two caution flags and a pit stop in which his Ford Taurus underwent major changes, and it went from lousy to flawless.

With 30 laps left in the 100-lap race, he was in seventh place, and he moved to fifth by Lap 80. When Scott Lynch, running in fourth, spun out on Lap 81, Portenga came out of the pits in second place, behind Schrader.

Four laps after taking the green flag, on Lap 92, Portenga slipped under Schrader’s Pontiac coming out of Turn 4, and won by 2.4 seconds. Trailing Portenga and Schrader to the finish were Kevin Richards in a Chevrolet, pole-sitter Johnny Borneman in a Ford, and former CART driver Bryan Herta, who made his stock car debut in a Chevrolet.

-- Martin Henderson