For the sixth year in a row, Saskatchewan race fans flocked to Auto Clearing Motor Speedway for the annual mid-week stop on the NASCAR Canadian Tire series.
And this year they saw a new champion as L.P. Dumoulin of Trois-Rivieres, Que. took the checkered flag at the event July 16, riding his number 47 WeatherTech Canada/Bellemare Dodge.
The win moved Dumoulin to the lead in the NASCAR Canadian Tire series for the season by 10 points over JR Fitzpatrick.
The Saskatoon race was dominated throughout much of the night by Scott Steckly, the two-time defending champion of the event.
He started the race in pole position and spent most of the early laps in the lead, holding off Andrew Ranger for the first quarter of the race.
But a time-consuming pit stop around lap 80 set Steckly back, and he spent the next several laps in catch-up mode as Ranger and then Jason Hathaway took the lead.
But Steckly made his way back to the front of the pack and finally caught and passed Hathaway for the lead on lap 171. Steckly stayed at the front as the race wound down.
However, a late caution came out with eight laps remaining, and that meant decisions for cars on the lead lap on whether to come into the pits to change tires for the final push to the finish.
Most drivers on the lead lap came in for tire changes. But Dumoulin had changed tires earlier in the race. While he was still on the lead lap, he had been running well behind and pitting would have certainly meant defeat this late in the race.
Deciding to roll the dice, the team kept Dumoulin out on the race track.
It was a strategy that moved Dumoulin right to the front of the field. But it also meant no tire changes, which raised questions whether Dumoulin's tires would be in good enough shape to keep him at the front after the restart.
The good news for Dumoulin is that he only had to hold off his nearest competitors for a couple of laps in a green-white-checkered finish in order to win.
That is exactly what happened. When the checkered flag was waved, Dumoulin had his first victory at the Velocity Prairie Thunder 250, with Hathaway, Steckly and Ranger trailing behind.
The race was notable not only for Dumoulin's victory but also for the presence of big name driver Alex Tagliani. Tagliani is best known for his participation in the IndyCar series, including qualifying in the pole position at the Indianapolis 500.
Tagliani's No. 18 machine qualified sixth in Saskatoon and did battle for the lead at one point, but one never got the sense that Tagliani's car had the horses to win the event. Tagliani finished well back in fifth place.
