Coming into the night many questions surrounded the Late Model division. Could Barry Beggarly repeat his 2nd place run from last week or possibly turn it to victory? Could anybody stop Rodney Cook? Could Dustin Rumley find any answer for the Cook gang?

After having the week of Independence day off and a rainout the previous week the Late Models were glad to finally be back at the 4/10's mile. In qualifying it showed that the drivers had been given alot of time to work on the cars as 6 cars were in the under 16 second range in qualifying. But since Dustin Rumley and his team went to a brand new Marlowe Chassis back on May 11th, no one has been able to top the 20 year old in qualifying at Ace and that streak continued Friday as Rumley took the pole with a 15.843.

During pre-race ceremonies it was determined by fan choice that the Late Model field would start according to qualifing, no redraw or invert on this night.

The surprising part of the night came when the field lines up on the front stretch and points leader Rodney Cook, who has 7 wins on the season, was staged at the rear of the field despite qualifying 5th quickest, he would start 14th.

As the green flag dropped Rumley jumped out to the lead early, fending off early challenges from Kernersville's Brad Kurth and Pelham's Barry Beggarly.

While Rumley broke away with the lead, Rodney Cook was fighting his way to the front, after 10 laps Cook was up to 6th place in the 14 car field.

The caution flag would fly on lap 17 as John Moore spun off of turn 4. With the double file restart cone on the track, Rodney Cook would take advantage and jump to the outside to restart 2nd right alongside of Rumley.

The 2 rivals, Rumley and Cook, side-by-side, Rodney's Ford vs. Rumley's Chevy, the 40 year old veteran vs. the 20 year old upstart.

Green flag is out and Rumley is off like a rocket, Cook holds his ground and hangs with Rumley for several laps before Rumley's car comes to him and he pulls away by 1/2 a car length on Cook.

Cautions on lap 52, and 58 would yield the same result with Rumley getting the best of Cook on the restarts.

Then just when it looks like Rumley has this one in the bag, until Kevin Anderson loses control off of turn 2 and brings out the nights final caution and sets up a green-white-checkerd finish.

Only the top 5 were allowed to take advantage of the restart cone with only 2 laps to go, and only 1 car takes advantage of it as Jason Payne goes from restarting 5th to restart 2nd.

Green flag drops and Rumley once again is off like a rocket, Cook has to fend off Payne on his outside the final 2 laps, giving Rumley just enough room to hold off Cook and take the checkerd flag, Cook brings home 2nd and Payne takes 3rd.

Dustin Rumley: ""It really just got better as I went, the restarts just killed me. It pushed real bad on the restarts. Shoot, if I could've just settled in and hit some marks I believe it would've got better every lap."

Rodney Cook: "Congratulations to Dustin he drove one heck of a race up there, I feel like we used up our stuff to get to the front but I threw everything I could at him, he (Rumley) just got me tonight"

So Rumley finally found an answer for Cook, at least as far as this week goes. Be on the lookout for Jason Payne as he has racked up 3 straight 3rd place finishes, but it will be interesting to see if Barry Beggarly will be able to find his way back to the podium, next friday July 23rd.

Results:
1 - Dustin Rumley #88
2 - Rodney Cook #14
3 - Jason Payne #9
4 - Barry Beggarly #82
5 - Scotty Warren #29
6 - Thomas Scott #8
7 - Bobby Griffin #85
8 - Dean Fogleman #7
9 - John Moore #4
10 - Kevin Parker #10
11 - Matt Bowling #1
12 - Kevin Anderson #53
13 - Brad Kurth #9
14 - Mike Chambers #27