Red Light Racing at Stafford

by Lowell Jewell

Skitter Creek SK Modifieds
Season 13 Race 5
Stafford Motor Speedway
February 6, 2025

by Tim Corder

Historic Stafford Motor Speedway hosted Red Light Racing’s Skitter Creek SK Modifieds on Thursday, February 6, 2025. The fifth race of season 13 would prove to be in stark contrast to the previous four races of the season. While the drivers still showcased hard racing, the yellow flag failed to wave once during the 100-lap event. Eric Stout led from flag-to-flag to claim his second win of the season and kept the points lead.

Stout won the pole with a 19.259 second qualifying lap, just 0.007 seconds quicker than both Jeff Aho and Ken Allen, who qualified second and third respectively. Rounding out the top 5 in the RaceDayCT.com starting grid were Brian Bianchi and Rob Higgins.

Stout, Aho, Bianchi and K. Allen were fixtures in the top 5 for the first 75 laps of the event. For much of the event AJ Hamel ran in 5^th place. These top 5 drivers had almost a one-second lead on 6^th place Rex Hoyle on lap 68 when a disaster nearly occurred for all of the front runners. Coming into turn one on lap 68, Eric Stout saw Brian Neff recovering from a spin to the infield. Stout, wanting to ensure not tangling with Neff, left the bottom line slightly open in turn 2. Aho attempted to seize the opportunity to take over the lead but made slight contact with Stout in the process. Aho slowed to give himself and Stout the opportunity to regain control of their cars. Bianchi unfortunately contacted the slowing car of Aho which sent Bianchi toward the outside wall. In Bianchi regaining control, he and Hamel contacted each other. The two cars then spun toward the infield, with Hamel hammering the inside wall. Hamel was unable to continue and finished in 24^th place. Bianchi still managed to hold on to a top 10 finish, finishing in 8^th.

Throughout the entire event, Stout and Aho put on a clinic of clean close racing. At times Stout seemed to be pulling away from Aho, but Aho would close back up. For much of the event the two were separated by no more than 2-tenths of a second.

Despite the event running entirely under the green flag, only six cars didn’t finish on the lead lap. The Hard Charger of the race was Bradley Stefane, who managed to pick up 8 spots, moving his 21^st starting position to finish 13^th. A testament to the clean racing throughout the field was that 17 of the 24 racers left the event without any incident points.

With the win, Stout extended his lead in the points, leaving the event 15 points ahead of Stefane. Chad Alcares, Ken Allen, and Rex Hoyle complete the top five in the championship running.

The series heads to Lanier National Speedway on February 13th. Catch all of the action LIVE on Virtual Grip Racing, the green flag is scheduled to drop at 7:55 PM Eastern.