By Mark Williams
Long time veteran racer Billy Decker out of Leighton PA won the opening day Nascar 25’s at Randy’s Raceway. Kicking off the 16th consecutive season at the Berks Oval. Decker won by almost a lap over a field of 13 racers, scoring a single segment win on lane three. Driving a new body #18 Decker was on the lead lap in every lane except lane two just missing the lead lap by 2 pieces of track, talk about consistency. A surprise entry for Chris Brubaker and a borrowed Cup body from team Reinhard lead the central PA racer to a fine runner-up spot on the evening. Brubaker won segments on lanes 3,4 and 5. Toby Reinhard wound up third with two segment wins with a strong car setup for opening night. Jim Levan a feature winner last season in Nascar was fourth without scoing a segment win. Rounding out the top five was Randy Haydt who had the most segment wins (4) on the night but struggled in lane one and bubbled out. The rest of the field was Scott Bender (1), Brian Vanbuskirk, Mark Williams(1), Adam Zappacosta (1), Cory Reinhard completed the top 10. John Kosmoski, Tony Zappacosta and newcomer Savvy completed the field.
Little known facts- Seven different drivers won segments on opening night this year, last season the opener was won by Bryan Kisthart and there were only 4 different segment winners. The feature win for Billy Decker was his career third and the segment win was number 105 in the Nascar class. A new addition to team Reinhard this week was Savvy, nice to have her racing with us. Team Reinhard starts the season strong with two top ten cars not to mention the body loan that placed second. Lane 8 won 4 out of the 13 segments. Randy Haydt is second in career Cup feature wins.
