AMP eSeries Season Three Round Six Review

The penultimate round of the AMP eSeries took place at the famed Talladega Superspeedway Wednesday night. The Dawson Forest 200 promised side by side action and plenty of cautions thanks to the high speed and banking at Talladega. 

Chukwuma Onubogu started on pole alongside Ryan Flannery. Jake Rogers catapulted into the lead on the back straight of lap one. The entire field remained compact thanks to the extreme draft effect at Talladega. On lap four, contact between Matt Carroll and Onubogu caused a chain reaction that collected all but three of the drivers. 

Rogers, Day and Flannery continued to lead after the restart as the majority of the pack continued to run side by side. Rogers lost a few positions and got caught up in the next wreck which brought out the second caution of the race. Fewer drivers fell victim to this pileup, but the caution was still deployed nevertheless. 

Peter Hutchings made his way to the front and began to pressure Flannery who controlled the race during this stage of the race. On lap 38, they came into the pits which caused a couple near misses as they hit the brakes to dive for pitlane. The rest of the field slowly trickled into the pits under green flag conditions to make their first stop of the 75 lap race. 

The next yellow came out on lap 50 when Wilmot and Hazelton touched at turn four. The rest of the drivers made their last necessary stop and Mattson’s decision to wait to pit payed off as he led with fresh tires with 20 laps to go. Flannery got caught on the outside without a drafting partner and dropped behind Mattson and Hutchings. 

Flannery ended up pushing Hutchings past Mattson before a collision between two of the Michael Motorsports drivers brought out the third caution of the race. Flannery slotted back in behind Hutchings at the restart. After only ten laps of running another big one involved all but five drivers, leaving only seven laps left until the checkered flag. 

This was interrupted by another yellow as Blake Fabiani spun leaving just enough laps for a green-white-checkered finish. Hutchings made a clean restart and maintained the lead as Flannery fell to 4th. Green opted to go high which gifted Flannery a draft setting up a side by side final lap for the win. Flannery pushed Green out of the final corner to give him a fender ahead of Hutchings for the win. Flannery ended up third with Day, Espinoza, and Mitchell all right behind.