ABBOTTSTOWN, Pa. — You wouldn't think it was the first week of March with the weather for the second week of racing around Central Pa. The weather and having a two-race weekend brought more teams into the area.
Fourty-one cars hit the track Saturday at Lincoln Speedway. When there's a slowing car and others still trying to race, that doesn’t mix well and collected four in the first B-Main.
Just five of the top 10 cars from the Ice Breaker make the feature.
Chase Dietz led the field to green. A few laps in, Anthony Macri picked off TJ Stutts for second. Dietz went low, as the concrete kid hammered down around the outside, to take the lead with nine to go and captured his first checkered of the season. Nearly the fastest race completed at Lincoln.
"Kind of like checkers though, you're not gonna pass a guy when you when you're following him so you know you have to have a car that's good enough to go where they're not," said Macri.
He looked to sweep the weekend on his fathers birthday as 42-cars compete in the speed palace opener.
Mike Wagner led the field to green. Lance Dewease, who started third, took the lead away with 13-left but a lap later, right in front of the leaders, Jared Esh and TJ Stutts brought out the red.
When they go back to green, the two legends battle. The first race out and the first win on the season for Dewease.
"Mike and I started racing at the same time. We've been racing here forever. So, it's neat. I have a really good friend that works on that race car and they have that race car really fast," said Dewease. "We were here practicing last night and wasn't very good so they worked hard on it. We put ourselves in a position all night long and had pretty good speed. It's always good to get the first win of the season, especially this early."
Colton Flinner carried more speed under Kyle Hardy, in the super later models, in one and two and picked up the opener win.
A driver isn't slowing down just because there's a battle off the track. For 23-year-old All-Star driver Parker Price-Miller, it’s been a battle off and on for pain in his right ankle since 2019. Parker had surgery to remove a bone spur in 2020 but the pain returned the next summer and in the fall was diagnosed with B-Cell Lymphoma, the most common form of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
"It didn't really seem real until all the doctors appointments after that and the treatments," said Price-Miller.
He plans his rounds of chemotherapy treatments around racing and hopes to be done with chemo when the green flag drops when the All-Stars points races begin in April. Next week, Parker will undergo his third round of chemo. He's hoping this round will be better than the second, after having to be rushed to the emergency room with blood clots in his lungs.
"Whenever you're sitting at home and you're just thinking about all the negatives. So, just getting out to the race track, it's a positive and I guess being at the racetrack is just like at home. I mean, it takes my mind off of the cancer. I focus on the race car and focus on trying win a race instead of, I have cancer and when's my next treatment," said Parker.
Parker doesn't race unless he feels 100 percent. He says he's trying to eat better, when he can, and goes to a gym, home in Indy, that trains specifically with racecar drivers.
He's had a lot of people reach out to him, whether with words of encouragement, cards or a monetary donation. But, Parker isn't looking money. He wasn't to find a cure so no one else had to go through it. Fifty percent of proceeds from his "no one fights alone" t-shirts and money raised helps benefit the Lymphoma Research Foundation. Parker says he’s blessed to have an awesome team at Sam McGhee Motorsports, supporting his fight.
"I appreciate them so much and you know, I'm very very thankful for that and in my mind, I'm one of the toughest people out here. I don't care what I have going on. I'm just gonna go do what I wanna do and you know just because I have cancer and doing chemo. It doesn't mean I'm just gonna stop me. For anyone out there, I mean, no matter what you're going through, it can always be worse," said Parker.
The All-Stars begin once again at Attica Raceway Park on April 8th.