July 3, 2012 - Tazewell Speedway kicked off the holiday week in a big way on Saturday, June 30th with the American Modified Series, and continued it on Tuesday night, featuring a $3,000 to win 50 lap feature for the Tazewell Late Models. The event also included a 30 lap, $1,000 to win feature for the Modified Street, and a $300 to win feature for the Pure Street. The event drew 21 Tazewell Late Models, 13 Modified Street, and 10 Pure Street.

The program kicked off with qualifying and heat race action in the Tazewell Late Model division. Steve Smith set fast time in Tazewell Late Model qualifying with a lap of 11.819 seconds. Greg Estes captured fast time in Modified Street qualifying with a lap of 13.429 seconds. Steve Smith smoked the Pure Street field with a qualifying lap of 14.720 seconds. In heat race action, Steve Smith won heat 1, with Jason Trammell taking heat 2. Both incidents ran caution free, aside of an incident on the initial start of heat 2.

Modified Street then took to the speedway for their 30 lap feature paying a cool $1,000 to the winner. Estes, who qualified fastest of the 13 competitors, jumped out to the lead, and never looked back leading all 30 laps to claim the win in dominating fashion. Warren McMahan won a hard fought battle over Robbie Comer for 2nd.

Modified Street Results
1. 31 - Greg Estes
2. 33 - Warren McMahan
3. 42 - Robbie Comer
4. 4 - Clyde Overholt
5. 56H - Jordan Horton
6. 56 - Tony Horton
7. P21 - Robbie Buchanan
8. 20S - James Weaver
9. M2 - Shannon Emery
10. 28 - Jesse Helton
11. 44C - Jason Sizemore
12. 21K - Larry Burke
13. 14 - Wayne Overholt

The Tazewell Late Models took to the track next for their 50 lap, $3,000 to win feature. Trammell got the jump on Smith going into turn 1 to take the lead. The top 5 ran solidly until lap 16 when 2nd place runner Steve Smith had problems. He restarted the event, but fell out due to overheating issues. Trammell continued to show the way until lap 27, when mechanical issues struck team Trammell, costing them the lead and the race. This gave the lead to Travis Fultz. Travis went on to lead the remaining 23 laps to score the largest payday of the season for the Tazewell Late Models pocketing a cool $3,000.

Tazewell Late Model Results
1. T0 - Travis Fultz
2. 5 - Bryan Hendrix
3. 51 - Mack McCarter
4. 77 - Steve Carr
5. 44K - Chase King
6. 7 - Heath Alvey
7. 25 - Scott Gardner
8. 111 - J. Allen
9. 24 - Gary Blanken
10. 35 - Matt Tharp
11. 31 - Greg Estes
12. 33 - Phillip Nichols
13. 90J - Jason Trammell
14. 3 - Steve Smith
15. 19 - Steve Rouse
16. 22 - Mark Leach
17. 97 - Keith Chapman
18. J11 - Jody Horton
19. 1 - Matt Melton
20. 42 - Josh Collins
DNS
Justin Beeler

Pure Street ended the night win their 25 lap feature paying $300 to win. Steve Smith pulled out to the lead, and led the caution-free event flag-to-flag to earn the $300. Aaron Guinn drove a tough race to end up second over Jonathan Miracle, J.J. Green, and Buster Cupp.

Pure Street Results
1. 2 - Steve Smith
2. 97 - Aaron Guinn
3. 41 - Jonathan Miracle
4. 12 - J.J. Green
5. 28 - Buster Cupp
6. 94 - Dustin Eldridge
7. 18 - Junior Cody
8. 01 - Luke Sharp
9. 66 - Daniel Reece
DQ
15 - Jason Long

Tazewell Speedway will be taking this coming Saturday night, July 7th, off for vacation. We will return to action on July 14th with our regular scheduled program featuring Tazewell Late Models, Modified Street, Pure Street, Classics, and 4 Cylinders. On behalf of Tazewell Speedway and Gary Hall, we would like to wish everyone a happy and safe 4th of July.