Andrew Steppat Leaves His Mark On FASCAR

 It was the annual running of the FASCAR Daytona 200 last evening, and it marked a couple of changes for the FRL's premiere stock car series. The big change was the move from Forza 6 to the Forza 7 engine. While it wasn't the smoothest of beginnings on the evening, qualifying did get run and Nicholas Hargrove in his #5 Toyota Camry won pole for the race.

 Once the green flag dropped however, Ethan Maestri in his #3 Ford Fusion rocketed to the front and led the openning laps of the 80 lap event. Nicholas would fall into his draft and the two would play a chessmatch at 200+ miles per hour for over 20 laps. Andrew Steppat, in his first FASCAR event, would fall into line behind Paul Maestri for several laps before moving his #01 Chevy around the #6 Ford to take over 3rd position about 10 laps into the race. Travis Billingsley in his #18 Toyota would work around Tony Tyree early on and settle into 5th position.

 Initial pit stops came around lap 27 and shook up the standings a bit. Nicholas Hargrove had taken over the lead as Ethan came to the pit lane first. As the cars cycled through their stops, Andrew Steppat moved into first place with Ethan Maestri hot on his bumper. Nicholas and Paul would run together a few hundred feet further back, vying for third place. Andrew and Ethan ran a tight battle for the lead spot for another 25 laps until Ethan botched his entry into pit lane, sliding across the grass and ending his chance for victory. After pit stops were finished, Andrew was far out in front of the rest of the field, but over the remaining 20 laps, Nicholas came on like a rocket, closing to within 300 feet of Andrew before running out of laps. Andrew took the checkered flag and the win at Daytona Superspeedway.

 Nicholas Hargrove comes in second, continuing an impressive showing at the 2.5 mile speedways. Ethan Maestri, despite the lawn mowing antics, finished in third position. Paul Maestri, running the #6 livery of Mark Martin, proved a consistent runner crossing the line in fourth place. Travis Billingsley didn't have the pace, but fared better than Tony Tyree, even after side-swiping the #47 Chevy in the late stages of the race. Travis would cross in fifth place. Tony didn't have the pace either, but hung on tenaciously, even after falling several laps down due to damage from brushing the wall at speed, and later with some help from Travis.

 Drivers for the FRL have a long wait for the next One-Off event, to be announced soon.