Wytheville, VA(February 15, 2010) -- This past Friday night the RACE22.com Late Model Stock Car Most Popular Driver Poll was officially closed and after a few votes that overzealous voters cast against the rules were thrown out, the results can now be made official.

With just over 12,000 votes cast in the week long voting session on RACE22.com, it all came down to just one vote between the winner and second place finisher. Yes, one single vote decided the poll among the top two with third place in the final tally finishing just 21 votes away from winning the LMSC Most Popular Driver Award.

There were $1,350 in usable prizes up for grabs from sponsors ARP Bodies, which offered a $750 Gift Certificate, Circle Racing Wheels, which offered a $100 Gift Certificate and RACE22.com Designs chipping in a $500 Gift Certificate. With that kind of prize pack up for grabs many drivers and teams involved in this poll were seen campaigning pretty hard from CE Falk's group page on FaceBook called "Vote For C.E. Falk as Most Popular driver" to what seemed like Ryan Wilson's entire family tree campaigning for him through FaceBook as well.

Tommy Lemons, Andy Mercer and Jesse LeFevers also utilized the social media giant, FaceBook to garner votes and not surprisingly the five drivers that campaigned the hardest were able to get the most votes in the end. Most of the drivers had a blast with poll and getting all their friends to vote including one person who reportedly "lost friends on FaceBook" because she was constantly posting for people to vote for her favorite driver.

With drivers all over FaceBook and Twitter campaigning for themselves as well as their favorite driver, it was no surprise that there were nearly an average of 3,000 votes per day, but for the battle to come down to one vote was incredible.

"I was really surprised by the number of people voting on RACE22.com over those five days," said RACE22.com webmaster, Langley Austin. "Many people probably think it was simply the same people voting over and over as much as 24-times per day, but looking at our unique hit numbers over the that time period shows that there were a lot of people voting."

In fact that numbers show that there were nearly as many unique hits for any one of the five days during the time when the poll was open for voting as RACE22.com had for many of our sessions Live Coverage from Martinsville, Myrtle Beach and the final three UARA-STARS Series races. Also looking at a map of the United States you can see that the votes came from far and wide with 33 of the 50 states recording votes and with a wide-variety of drivers locking up the most votes in each state.

"It's now obvious that because of our racers family and friends across the United States, RACE22.com isn't just a SouthEastern website, but something that many people around the country are looking at to keep up with their favorite drivers," continued Austin. "I'm thankful that ARP Bodies and Circle Racing Wheels was able to step-up and support the Most Popular poll, because I think the prizes is what got so many of the drivers and teams to campaign so hard."

At the time the poll's closed on Friday night or rather early in the morning hours on Saturday, it came down to Virginia's Most Popular Driver from our previous poll and North Carolina's Most Popular Driver for the top spot in the overall Most Popular Driver award. Tommy Lemons and Ryan Wilson had swapped the lead back and forth for much of the poll with Wilson often taking the lead during the work day and slipping behind Lemons during the night hours.

On the final night, knowing that the votes were about to end, Wilson's supporters and Lemons supporters worked the poll hard with a few going a little overboard and causing their votes to be thrown out. In the end it was Ryan Wilson who squeaked out with the win by just one vote over Lemons. Lemons accumulated 3,233 votes, but it was Wilson's 3,234 votes that picked up the award for the Randleman, NC driver.

Andy Mercer, Jesse LeFevers and CE Falk had a great battle for much of the time for third through fifth positions in the poll, but in the end one of the drivers nearly caught up to Wilson and Lemons for a chance to win the award. Despite Falk's FaceBook group page, which has 237 members(as of time of this post), Falk was the first of the top five drivers to fade toward the last day of voting when he slipped to finish fifth. LeFevers was the next to fade as he finished fourth on the list and Andy Mercer rallied in the late stages of voting to finish with 3,213 votes.

It was an intense battle among those top five drivers, but it wasn't until the next to last day that many of the other 11 drivers faded in the battle after being close enough that a strong rally would have put them inside the top five as well. Finishing sixth through eleventh was Lance Gatlin, RA Brown, Brennan Poole, Coleman Pressley, Terry Evans and Nate Monteith. To see what drivers carried the most votes in what specific states please see the color coded map below.

RACE22.com would like to give a special thanks to all the drivers who campaigned as well as the fans and readers who diligently casted their votes over the five days that the poll was open for voting. Also Congratulations to Ryan Wilson on winning the ARP Bodies, Circle Racing Wheels, RACE22.com Designs Late Model Stock Car Most Popular Driver Award.