DeLorenzo pulls away to win season-ending McDonald's 100 at Fonda Speedway

In the biggest race of the year at Fonda Speedway, Matt DeLorenzo led the final 86 laps of the McDonald’s 100 to take home $9,500 Sunday.

The feature turned out to be a caution-free race, allowing DeLorenzo to pull away from the field for his third win of the year in the season finale at Fonda.

“We protected our home turf tonight,” DeLorenzo said in victory lane. “This is the biggest win of my career.”

After a redraw settled the starting positions for the feature, Ted Lamb and Jeff Trombley, Saturday night’s feature winner, started on the front row, with Trombley taking the lead at the drop of the green flag with A.J. Romano in tow.

Tim McCreadie started the feature third and after falling back early, regained his starting position on lap three, getting by both DeLorenzo and Lamb.

By lap six, Trombley had built up a straightaway lead and was in lapped traffic, while DeLorenzo made a three-wide move down the middle of Romano and a lapped car to take over second.

On the inside of the backstretch on lap 15, DeLorenzo took over a lead that he would just keep building, and never looked back.

Romano and McCreadie kept swapping the third position, while right behind them, Stewart Friesen and Pat Ward were battling for fifth. The top five at lap 40 consisted of DeLorenzo, Trombley, McCreadie, Friesen and Ward.

At the halfway point, DeLorenzo was lapping cars in the top 10, and without the benefit of a caution flag, he just kept building up his lead to a half a track, getting through lapped traffic with ease.

With 10 laps to go, the battle for second heated up as McCreadie, Friesen, and Brett Hearn all caught up to Trombley and made it a four-car battle for the spot.

Friesen got by both McCreadie and Trombley with five laps to go to take over the second position. DeLorenzo went on to the win over Friesen, Trombley, McCreadie, Hearn, Romano, Pat Ward, who ended up being the last car on the lead lap, Ryan Odasz, Jim Davis and 2011 track champion Ronnie Johnson.

With his second-place finish, Friesen also captured the Thunder on the Thruway Modified Series Championship.

“I had no idea how big of a lead I had, but the long run definitely helped us,” DeLorenzo said. “The lapped cars were brutal, but the last 10 laps I just ran the bottom and protected the lead so that, hopefully, nobody would get by.”

“That was a heck of a race,” Friesen said. “A 100-lap event is no easy race here at Fonda, especially when you have some fun the night before. The car was good at the end, but I never really even knew where I was running. The Thunder Series is a great series with some great competition, so it is great to win it for the second year in a row.”

“I went a little bit softer on tire than everybody else and burned them off so they were able to get by me,” Trombley said. “I ran as hard as I could, and there was a lot of tough competition here today. John Grant has the motor running well, and I got a message from Jack Johnson who told me to put the car away for next year and leave it alone.”

Rob Yetman took the lead on lap 10 in the 30-lap pro-stock feature and led the rest of the way to capture his fifth win of the year over Kenny Gates, track champion Rocky Warner, Pete Broderson and Tom Denton. Warner was crowned the Best of Four Thunder Series pro-stock champion after his second-place finish.