Two of the four feature races at Estevan Motor Speedway on Monday night were yellow-checkered finishes, and the other two went caution-free.
Steven Pfeifer grabbed his first modified win of the year in Estevan, passing pole sitter Chris Hortness midway through the race and then taking a huge lead before seeing the feature end in a caution.
Pfeifer quickly moved into second from his starting position of ninth. After a brief battle with Hortness, he passed the early leader. Hortness was running too low and drove into one of the track tires, knocking him out of the race.
"Right away on the bottom, it was just Joren (Boyce) and the rest of the guys were up a little bit higher," said Pfeifer. "I was just looking for an opportunity to get by Joren there. He was getting a little bit tighter and I figured there was going to be one lap he could just move over a little bit. I just needed to get my wheels in there, because Joren's going to race you clean. As soon as I got my tires by him, he let me by. I knew I had Hortness, he was getting the same front-end push. He passed me once and he drove me down really hard. I wasn't exactly expecting that."
Pfeifer then stretched out his lead over Tyler Wagner and Aaron Turnbull and was never challenged.
"I just had a good line and I stuck to it. I actually pedalled it off a little bit because I felt like I was pushing it hard and I just wanted to make consistent laps. I didn't mess with the car, I didn't change my entries, I just clicked off laps and did the same thing 25 times at both ends," he said, adding he's had "nothing but bad luck" this year, including a wreck on July 19 at EMS.
Turnbull got past Wagner on the last lap, but due to the finish, the results were rolled back to the last completed lap and Wagner finished second.
"That's happened more times this year than I can ever remember," said Pfeifer. "We used to do green-white-checkered if the race wasn't done, but every track this year for whatever reason has been doing this. If the field has taken the white, then it's done."
The evening also featured the Blaine Brothers Late Model Challenge Series, and their A-main was the last action of the night.
David McDonald of Huron, S.D., had the pole, but John Kaanta of Elk Mound, Wisc., quickly took the lead. The two battled throughout the 40-lap feature, which was free of yellow flags. It looked like Kaanta would take the checkered flag, but McDonald squeezed past him in the end.
In the stock car feature, which also went caution-free, Gregg Mann and Rocky Alexander quickly moved up into the top two spots and separated themselves from the pack. Mann went on to win the race.
"I thought I was starting in the third row, but I guess that other 12 car didn't even start the feature," said Mann. "When I saw I was starting in the second row, I thought, well, I gotta try (to jump in front). I thought I might get pinched down when I go down low like that, but they all kind of slid up going into (turn) one, so I was around the bottom where I wanted to be and it stuck there."
A handful of challengers took turns occupying third place, but none of them ever came close to Alexander, who himself was a couple of car lengths behind Mann.
"I can't complain about that car tonight, we had it working just right," said Mann.
However, there were problems earlier in the day and Mann and his crew got to the track late.
"After we changed everything we could change, I thought, let's just see what happens. There's not much I can do after that. We fought with it at the house for awhile. It's always, 'why does it gotta do this right when we're ready to leave?'"
Brock Beeter was the winner of the hobby stock A-main in another yellow-checkered finish, with Ryder Scholpp finishing second.
