Worrell Survives Teammate Tussle: Battered Lowe Settles for Second in North Wilkesboro Opener

North Wilkesboro, NC — Chris Worrell overcame a 14th-place starting spot and a high-stakes collision with his own teammate to capture a wild victory in the Season 28 opening round of the Bush Talk Radio Super Late Model Series at the historic North Wilkesboro Speedway. The 100-lap feature lived up to its billing, testing a stacked field with heavy short-track attrition and dramatic veteran showdowns under strict “Big Boy Racing” rules.

The night kicked off with Steve Hilbert on the pole, flanked by newcomer Charles Roth. However, the green flag had barely waved before the field fractured in Turn 3. Joe Segalla got loose on entry, triggering an accordion-effect scramble that left Trey Blohm—affectionately known as “The Caveman”—nowhere to go. Blohm t-boned Segalla’s machine, flipping his own car onto its lid like a beached catfish. Because the series operates with no fast repairs, the violent wreck immediately ended Blohm’s competitive hopes, though he later returned to the track to log laps and salvage points.

For the first half of the feature, Steve Hilbert was the class of the field. Shaking off a historical tendency to fade late in runs, Hilbert led the first 53 laps, brilliantly leveraging a handful of early caution periods to cool his tires and protect his right-front rubber. Behind him, an intense battle for the runner-up spot ignited between John Wilson and Kurt “Cucumber” Smith, with Smith eventually prevailing. Commentators noted that the high-horsepower late models were a handful on the abrasive surface, requiring drivers to feather the throttle as if an egg were trapped underneath the pedal.

As the race crossed the halfway mark, the league’s elite heavy hitters began surging through the pack after navigating the field invert. Eleven-time winner James Lowe and teammate Chris Worrell—the only two active drivers on the grid with prior track victories—methodically hunted down the leaders. Lowe’s journey was a masterclass in perseverance; he was swept into an early mid-pack accordion incident and had to nurse his car down pit road for repairs before launching his counter-attack. By Lap 60, the veterans caught Hilbert, and Lowe snatched the lead after a close-quarters pass that saw him momentarily bump and straighten out Kurt Smith. Worrell and “young gun” Luke Logan Allen followed closely in his tire tracks.

The defining moment of the night arrived on Lap 89, turning the teammate dynamic into a pressure cooker. Worrell hounded Lowe for the top spot, carrying too much corner speed on entry and slamming violently into the back of Lowe’s #07 machine. Lowe executed an incredible, smoke-filled save to keep his car out of the outside wall, but the contact allowed Worrell to slip past into the lead. Allen attempted to capitalize on the chaos by diving to the inside to make it three-wide, but his gamble backfired when he clipped the flat apron line and smacked the concrete wall, disabling his car’s momentum.

Worrell held on over the final distance to complete a spectacular 13-position charge to the checkered flag. Lowe brought his heavily battered machine home in second, jokingly describing his car as a “piñata” that had been struck by nearly every driver on the track. Allen limped across the stripe to salvage third, while Kurt Smith and Todd Liston rounded out the top five.