Tyson Turnbull didn't take the easy road to victory on Saturday.
After hanging out near the leaders earlier in the race, Turnbull passed Dave Dease with six laps to go and hung on to win the modified feature at the first race program of the year at Estevan Motor Speedway.
"(Dease) just showed me the line, I guess. I'm usually up there, but I thought there was no way you could run like that up there (considering the track conditions), but he proved me wrong. I had to drive up in front of him to get the lead, but that's the way you have to do it sometimes," said Turnbull, the defending modified champion at EMS.
But in order to earn his fourth career victory at Estevan, Turnbull had to make adjustments earlier in the feature.
"I was looking pretty good the first few laps, and then five or 10 laps in everybody started passing me and I was kinda getting depressed there. I just found a good line, I guess."
There was a very lengthy stretch near the end of the race with no cautions, although Turnbull said he wouldn't have minded a yellow flag after he got into lap traffic.
"I could've almost used a caution when we got into lappers there. I got by the one guy and then we got to Jim Harris and they gave him the blue flag, the move over flag. I was on the outside and they gave him the move over flag and he was in the middle. I wanted him to move over to the bottom, not to the outside, so I damn near went right off the end of the track."
Meanwhile, Gregg Mann dominated the stock car class on Saturday, winning both the feature and his heat in a walk.
Mann had the pole for the stock feature and led from start to finish.
Still, he said he would have preferred it play out differently.
"I'd rather come by a few guys and then know what they're doing, and how their speed is. When you start out front, you really don't know who's got what line on you. You could be running a line that's going away and the other guy's found something better.
I made a good choice, I went up high, and it worked for me up there again," said Mann.
Mann has a new motor in his car and he said the vehicle was set up for success.
"We spent a lot of time with the car over the winter. We took what we had last year at the end of the season, we were set up real good, and added a few more things to it to make it a little better. It seems to be working for us," he said.
"It's a real nice car to drive and it was really working. Whatever I wanted to do with it on the track, whether it was dry or tacky, the car would do what I wanted it to do."
Minot's Brandon Beeter won the hobby stock feature, taking the lead midway through the race.
Keith Cassidy had been in the lead up to that point, having taken the pole, but he spun out on a turn and eventually finished ninth.
Beeter credited the victory in part to staying away from collisions like that one.
"It's mainly just staying out of trouble, keeping away from the cars in front of you. Take your time, take it easy, it's a long race, don't get yourself in trouble early. I had trouble in the heat race. I went off Turn 1 and 2 in the heat race, so I learned my lesson there, so I didn't want to do that again," he said.
"The car was handling good on the wet track. I was hoping for a caution at the end because the track was really starting to come in and become really fast, but I was in so much lap traffic I couldn't really stretch the legs on it."
The next race program at EMS is on May 17.
