Bubba Pollard Pulls a Clinic in Battle at Berlin Win
By Matt Weaver:
What an absolute clinic.
Even against a field that featured Chase Elliott, William Byron, Erik Jones and Josh Berry, it was Bubba Pollard that reaffirmed his status as the current king of the Super Late Models with a nearly flawless victory in the $30,000-to-win Battle at Berlin on Wednesday night.
Pollard posted the third fastest time in qualifying and spent the next 250 laps simply racing the race track. Even when defending winner Evan Shotko drove by him with 57 laps to go, Pollard stayed the course and waited until the next restart after a competition caution to retake the lead and drive to one of the biggest wins of his decorated career.
It wasn’t without nerves however, as Pollard thought he might lost oil pressure, and then he developed a significant push in the closing laps.
“Honestly, that was the first time I really mashed on it all night, and it just felt different,” Pollard said in Victory Lane. “I got back in my rhythm and just though, ‘hell, it’s going to blow up because the motor is lapped out’ and I was just going to let it rip.
“Brad Peters builds great racing engines and we saved this one for this race and I’m glad we did.”
Pollard has won prestigious races like the All-American 400, Winchester 400 and Canadian Short Track Nationals but this one immediately ranks near the top due to both the purse and quality of competition he won against.
“All of them are special because you never know when your last one is going to be but it is special with the caliber of guys that came here tonight,” Pollard said. “It means a lot. Doing here at this track, this facility and this whole program at Berlin, we wanted to support it because they make us feel welcome and I really put a lot into winning here.”
Shotko led early and raced up front all day but Pollard thinks he ultimately got too trigger happy on the timing to go.
“He’s young and I know he wanted to lead but I had to be patient because I knew we had a good race car,” Pollard said. “The race changes your strategy depending on when the cautions fall. I knew we needed to wait as long as we could. We weren’t lapping cars so it would be hard to come back through the field too.”
Shotko ultimately fell back to third behind Chase Elliott, and you could cut the figurative disappointment with a knife on pit road afterwards.
“I’m pretty disappointed,” Shotko said. “It’s not often that we have races here where we can take four at one time and I just didn’t free the car up enough to compensate for fuel burn-off and I’m gutted because it was a great car, it had speed and it was just a bad call.”
Ultimately, Shotko doesn’t believe it made the difference as the iconic No. 26 had the field covered.
“Bubba was just that good,” Shotko said. “I knew he had a Super (engine) and I wanted to pass him because (we were in a crate) and I wanted to control the restart and it didn’t work out, and it is what it is, and I feel like, nine times out of ten I make the right call, but tonight wasn’t one of them.”
Elliott finished second but was generally pleased with the result given that it was his best overall performance in a Super Late Model since returning to the discipline with greater regularity this season.
“I just got too tight at the end once the sun went down,” Elliott said. “It was a lot better than we’ve been, so that’s good, and Bubba just did a great job as always. Congratulations to him. It’s cool to me that a couple of Georgia guys can come up here and have a good night. I’m never too bummed about that.”
Josh Berry, driving in a one-off for TK Racing and VanDoorn Racing Development, finished fourth ahead of Kyle Crump. William Byron finished seventh, Erik Jones 11th and Carson Hocevar 24th.
The event was sanctioned by the SRL National Tour in conjunction with the TEKTON Berlin Raceway Super Late Model division and counted towards points for both championships. The race featured a handful of crashes early, including one massive pileup on Lap 86 that began with Berry and Jurkovic but also collected Derek Griffith and Jones.
Jesse Love broke a left rear wheel hub, or something, sending the car headfirst into the Turn 1 wall.
Battle at Berlin 250
August 9 2023
Berlin Raceway
- Bubba Pollard
- Chase Elliott
- Evan Shotko
- Josh Berry
- Kyle Crump
- Dylan Stovall
- William Byron
- Cole Butcher
- Joe Bush
- Austin Hull
- Erik Jones
- Kevin Cremonesi
- Brian Campbell
- Ken Wobma
- Tyler Roahrig
- Brian Tillema
- Boris Jurkovic
- Gio Ruggiero
- Chase Burda
- Michael Simko
- Derek Kneeland
- Andrew Gressel
- Wes Griffith
- Caron Hocevar
- Tony Elrod
- Derek Griffith
- Blake Rowe
- Andrew Scheid
- Jacob Gomes
- Trevor Sanborn
- Keith Herp
- Scott Thomas
- Jesse Love
- Chris Munson
