Full Throttle

Corey LaJoie followed in his father’s tread marks Saturday at Rockingham Speedway, snaring his first-ever UARA victory at the track where father Randy LaJoie clinched one of his two NASCAR Busch Series championships in the late 1990s.

“This is an awesome place to get a first win!” an ecstatic Corey LaJoie said. “I remember sitting in victory lane in ’96 or ’97. I was probably five or six, sitting on his shoulders in victory lane when he clinched the championship here. So it’s cool to win here, especially having earned my way here. It was an awesome opportunity that Eddie Sharp gave me and I’m thankful for it.”

It was, indeed, a Cinderella story for the young LaJoie who crashed his car during a test at the 1-mile track earlier this year.

“I came here three months ago, built a brand-new (Steve) Leavitt car, broke a left rear hub and totaled it,” LaJoie explained. “I was like, ‘Oh, hell. What am I going to do now? I have no race car?’ I was here with the ARCA cars and Eddie’s (Sharp) team felt bad for me. He said, ‘I tell you what. I’ve got a Late Model; it’s just a sitting chassis with a body on it. If you get it ready, you’ll run it at Rockingham.’

“I drove up there (to Denver, N.C.) an hour every day, trying to get that thing ready and get it dialed in. The first laps on that thing were the first laps on Friday. Ain’t the normal way to do it, but it’s the way we had to do it. We didn’t have a choice.”

Randy LaJoie admitted he was “way proud” of his son’s victory.

“I’m just happy for the kid,” LaJoie said. “He’s worked very hard. Built a new car for himself and built the one of Eddie’s. I’m just very proud of him.”

It was clear from the beginning the battle for the race victory would be between LaJoie’s Chevrolet and Paddy Rodenbeck’s Dodge. The two rode nose-to-tail for most of the event, then broke into a side-by-side, fender-to-fender duel in the final 10 laps. A late-race caution forced the event to 79 laps from the originally scheduled 70 and into a green-white-checker finish with LaJoie holding off Rodenbeck for a 0.337 victory.

Rodenbeck finished second, .337 of a second behind the winner. Andy Loden was third, followed by Kyle Grissom and Clay Greenfield.

There were 32 starters and several represented the second generation of well-known racing families. Coleman Pressley (son of former NASCAR star Robert) finished seventh, Lee Tissot (son for retired driver Randy) finished 11th, UARA-STARS regular Brandon McReynolds (son of Larry) finished 19th.

Defending series champion Jake Crum finished 10th.