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The Moweaqua Missile Continues to Blast Through The Competition With His 6th Summer National Win in 10 Events Jeffrey A. Bayless Danville, IL (July 3) Round 10 of DIRT Motorsports UMP Summer Nationals rolled into Vermillion County Speedway Sunday night with 35 entries on hand to give it a go at the $6000 top prize. When the dust had settled it was Moweaqua. IL native "The Moweaqua Missile" Shannon Babb celebrating in front of a packed house standing beside his Jay Dickens powered CJ Rayburn race car. Babb's sponsors include J&J Steel, Car City, G&C Enterprises, Platinum Motors, Watters Autoland, and Petroff Towing. The first three rows of the 40 lap feature event were to be determined from the 9 car 9 lap dash comprised of the 7 quickest qualifiers, a Summer National point provisional, and an UMP National point provisional. Jeep VanWormer led the pack into turns 1 and 2 from the pole position but it was Jimmy Mars setting the pace into 3 and 4 and went on to win convincingly by a straight away advantage over fast qualifier Shannon Babb, VanWormer, Randy Korte, Rodney Melvin, and Billy Drake who went from 8th to 6th on the last lap sneaking by the battling duo of Brian Shirley and Dennis Erb Jr. 12 more cars would transfer to the feature through the heats with 4 coming from each of the three heats. Shirley stormed away from the pack to win by 10 car lengths over a 3 car battle for 2nd with 6th starting Darren Miller, Duane Chamberlain, and Kevin Weaver coming home in that order. Weaver had started 2nd, dropped back to 7th, and then fought his way back into contention to join the fracas for the runner-up position on the last 2 laps. In the second heat Steve Hillard stormed from his second row starting position to lead the first three laps before pole sitter Erb powered back by to lead the rest of the way and grab the checkers 3 car lengths in front of Hillard. John Gill and Dan Walden also transferred through this heat. In the third and final heat Eric Smith jumped out front early and went on to lead the entire distance as Richie Hedrick, Terry English, and Cory Rolfe snagged the other transfer spots. Two more cars would transfer through the last chance races with 1 coming from each and 2 provisionals would be added to complete the 22 car field. Mark Voight would lead flag to flag in the first conci with modified ace Denny Schwartz grabbing second on the last lap from Joe Harlan. In the second conci, local racer Brian Clendenen would work his way through the field to grab the top spot on the last lap to grab the checkers after starting 6th. Jason Feger would finish second ahead of Josh Ferguson. Feger and Patrick Sheltra were awarded the provisionals. VanWormer, Mars, and Babb would fly into the first set of turns 3 wide to start the main event with Babb coming out on top to lead the first lap with Mars, VanWormer, Korte, and Melvin following behind him. Five laps in, Babb had opened a 5 car length lead over Mars who was desperately trying to hold Korte at bay as Korte had powered by VanWormer 2 laps earlier. The battle for second raged 5 car lengths in front of 3 car duel for 4th as VanWormer, Erb, and Melvin were dicing it up for that position. Babb would ride his mount to a straight away lead by the 1/2 way mark and was entering heavy lapped traffic when he caught a reprieve as Rolfe spun to a stop in turn 3 to bring out the races only caution. However Babb would take back up where he left off powering back to a 5 car length lead on the restart as Korte was defending the runner-up spot from Mars who had just relinquished it to Korte a few laps before the caution. Babb would reclaim his straight away lead by the 30th circuit but would see Korte cut it in half over the last few laps as Babb found himself tied up in slower cars on a track that was quickly becoming thought to pass on. At the checkers it was Babb by 8 car lengths over Korte, Mars, Erb, Hedrick, Melvin, Hillard, VanWormer, Drake, and Shirley. Round 11 of the touring series will be conducted at Fayette County Speedway outside of Brownstown, IL on our nations 219th birthday. RACE NOTES National UMP Modified point leader, Denny Schwartz, jumped behind the wheel of Roger Long's Pierce Chassis to try his hand at late model racing for the evening. Schwartz would fail to make the show finishing 1 spot out of a transfer spot in both his heat and conci. On the other hand, he did when his 8th consecutive modified feature at Vermillion County Speedway in other racing action. Shannon Babb's 2005 Summer National hot streak may put him in the record books. With 19 scheduled races remaining he has all ready reached the half way mark of 12 wins in one campaign set by Billy Moyer in 1999. Babb's current winning percentage sits 3rd all time at .600 with only Billy Moyer's 94 campaign (.692) and Scott Bloomquist's (.692) better than his current batting average. RESULTS UMP LATE MODELS 35 Cars Fast Time: 18 Shannon Babb 13.523 Dash (9 laps 6 transfer) 1. 28 Jimmy Mars (2) 2. 18 Shannon Babb (4) 3. 55 Jeep VanWormer (1) 4. 00 Randy Korte (3) 5. 27 Rodney Melvin (5) 6. 9 Billy Drake (8) 7. 3S Brian Shirley (9) 8. 28 Dennis Erb Jr. (7) 9. 9 Eric Smith (6) Heat 1 (10 laps 4 transfer) 1. 3S Brian Shirley (1) 2. 32D Darren Miller (6) 3. 1C Duane Chamberlain (4) 4. B12 Kevin Weaver (2) 5. 30 Mark Voight (3) 6. 25 Jason Feger (7) 7. 7 Butch Smith (8) 8. 7 Jim Letizia (5) 9. 72 Ed Woodard (9) 10. 13 Terry Starks (10) DNF Heat 2 1. 28 Dennis Erb Jr. (1) 2. 34 Steve Hillard (3) 3. 75 John Gill (5) 4. 25W Dan Walden (6) 5. 12 Jordan Bland (4) 6. Z Joe Harlan (2) 7. 1 Kyle Logue (10) 8. 24B Kellen Conover (8) 9. 5* John Sizemore (7) 10. 56 Rohn Moon (9) DNF Heat 3 1. 9 Eric Smith (1) 2. 0 Richie Hedrick (3) 3. 96 Terry English (2) 4. 22R Cory Rolfe (7) 5. 36 Denny Schwartz (4) 6. 2F Josh Ferguson (8) 7. 23 Patrick Sheltra (5) 8. 53 Brian Clendenen (9) 9. D1 Turk Letizia (6) Conci 1 (10 laps 1 transfer) 1. 30 Voight (1) 2. 36 Schwartz (4) 3. Z Harlan (3) 4. 12 Bland (2) 5. 56 Moon (9) 6. 23 Sheltra (5) 7. 5* Sizemore (8) 8. 7 Letizia (6) 9. 72 Woodard (7) Conci 2 1. 53 Clendenen (6) 2. 25 Feger (2) 3. 2F Ferguson (1) 4. 7 Smith (3) 5. 1 Logue (4) 6. 24B Conover (5) 7. D1 Letizia (7) Feature (40 laps $6000 to win) 1. 18 Babb (2) 2. 00 Korte (4) 3. 28 Mars (1) 4. 28 Erb (8) 5. 0 Hedrick (12) 6. 27 Melvin (5) 7. 34 Hillard (11) 8. 55 VanWormer (3) 9. 9 Drake (6) 10. 3S Shirley (7) 11. 75 Gill (14) 12. 30 Voight (19) 13. 9 Smith (9) 14. 1C Chamberlain (13) -1 lap 15. 25 Feger (21) -2 laps 16. 23 Sheltra (22) 17. 25W Walden (17) -3 laps 18. 22R Rolfe (18) DNF 19. 32D Miller (10) 20. B12 Weaver (16) 21. 53 Clendenen (20) 22. 96 English (15) Lap Leaders: 1-40 18 Babb Cautions: 1