L.P. Dumoulin breaks through for first oval victory in Saskatoon

He had won on a road course, however it was an oval victory that the Quebec native craved. Now, the wait is over as L.P. Dumoulin was able to score the victory on Wednesday night in the Velocity Prairie Thunder 250 at Auto Clearing Speedway.

“Well, we had a great time out here,” Dumoulin commented post-race. “The car wasn’t the way we wanted it to be at the beginning of the race, but the WeatherTech Canada/BelleMare car ended up being really good near the end of the race because my team did a really good strategy. We opted to pit earlier to put new tires on and ended up babysitting the car the whole race. I mean, fortunately, there was no cautions for a long time so nobody could put tires on and at the end, we ended up a green-white-checkered. Some people just pitted to get tires and I ended up being second.

“From then on, I was just going all out for two laps and we ended up winning this race with the WeatherTech car.”

When a caution came out with under 10 laps to go, Dumoulin was one of the two drivers that elected to stay out while the rest of the lead lap drivers pitted before the green-white-checkered. His team made the right call as Dumoulin was able to clear Joey McColm on the restart and hold off a late race charge from Jason Hathaway to claim the victory.

“I was really happy about it,” Dumoulin said. “I guess my car looked like a little rabbit with all those wolves trying to catch up. They had new tires, but three laps is not enough. We ended up being lucky enough to put everything down and win the race. It’s awesome.”

It marks the third career NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Mobil 1 victory for the driver of the No. 47 WeatherTech Canada/BelleMare Dodge and his first victory of the 2014 season. With the victory, Dumoulin also takes over the points lead, 10 points ahead of J.R. Fitzpatrick.

Jason Hathaway would finish second for his second-straight runner-up finish after finishing second to Andrew Ranger on Friday night in Edmonton.

“It was a great race,” Hathaway commented afterwards. “Really battled hard with Scott and all the guys early on and got some good track position, and ended up finishing right where we were with some new right-side tires. I was happy with finishing second. Coming out of here with a third in Edmonton and a second here, we’ll go home and regroup and get ready for St. Eustache. We always run well there, too.”

Pole sitter and defending race winner Scott Steckly would finish third after leading a race-high 153 laps.

“It’s definately frustrating to end up third with the car that we had tonight. It was pretty dominant,” Steckly expressed post-race. “We were just biding our time hanging out there and I thought with 50 to go there’d be caution, but we kept going and going so I knew there’d be one sometime soon. L.P. made a really good choice in putting the tires on early, which left us no choice but to put our tires on late in the race. I just have to thank all the fans for coming out and all my sponsors.”

Ranger and Alex Tagliani rounded out the top-five. McColm’s gamble to not take tires along with Dumoulin would hand him a sixth place finish, with Fitzpatrick, D.J. Kennington, Noel Dowler and Erica Thiering rounding out the top-10. Only seven drivers would finish on the lead lap as many drivers fell a lap down during the long green-flag run during the middle stretch of the event.

After qualifying second, Steve Mathews wouldn’t have the night that he wanted as he would finish 15th after being involved in an incident with Mark Dilley and James Van Domselaar at lap 103.

The Velocity Prairie Thunder 250 can be seen on TSN on Saturday, July 26 at 3 p.m. The next race for the Canadian Tire Series is on Saturday, July 26 at Autodrome St. Eustache (Quebec) with the National 250.

Velocity Prairie Thunder 250 Results

RACE STATISTICS
Fastest Qualifier: Scott Steckly, Time: 14.616 Seconds, Speed: 82.020 mph
Time of Race: 1 hrs., 22 mins, 23 secs    Average Speed: 60.874 mph    Margin of Victory: .154 Seconds
Caution Flags: Laps 19-22 (Car 57 spin in turn #3[Freepass] [none]); 34-38 (Car 51 spin in turn #4 [none]); 40-46 (Car 5 spin in turn #2 [57]); 77-84 (Cars 72 & 28 spin in turn #3 [none]); 104-112 (Contact between cars 14 & 02 [72]); 116-120 (Car 28 slow on track [51]); 241-248 (Car 56 slow on track [84]). 7 for 46 laps.
Lap Leaders: Scott Steckly 1-79, Joey McColm 80-112, Andrew Ranger 113-127, Jason Hathaway 128-170, Scott Steckly 171-172, Jason Hathaway 173, Scott Steckly 174-245, Joey McColm 246-249, L.P. Dumoulin 250-251. Total
Laps Led: Scott Steckly 153, Jason Hathaway 44, Joey McColm 37, Andrew Ranger 15, L.P. Dumoulin 2. 8 changes involving 5 drivers.