Zack VanderBeek celebrated the loss of 120 pounds since his last win with the Summit USMTS National Championship presented by RacinDirt by celebrating a $10,000 win on Sunday in the 10th Annual Super Clean War in West Union at the Fayette County Speedway.
From the outside of the front row, Dan Ebert shot to the lead to take control of the race on the opening lap. Meanwhile, VanderBeek followed in second as the pair raced bumper-to-bumper through heavy lapped traffic while Tom Berry Jr., Tyler Wolff and Rodney Sanders worked inside the top five.
The yellow flag waved for the first time with 20 laps in the books and 20 still remaining, and that opened the door for VanderBeek as he powered ahead of Ebert in the first corner to take over the top spot.
‘The Z-Man’ found himself with a massive 3.5-second cushion over Ebert nine laps later while Berry, Sanders and Jason Hughes filled the top five positions when the yellow flag waved again.
The pace slowed, but back underway VanderBeek pulled away again and cruised to nearly a two-second margin of victory over Berry, Hughes, Sanders and Ebert.
“He kind of gave me the top line there and it was just wide open and once I could carry good momentum I could tell my car was really good so I was comfortable up there,” said VanderBeek after scoring his 51st career USMTS victory.
The win was worth $10,000 to the 38-year-old builder of VanderBuilt Race Cars in New Sharon, Iowa. It was his second in West Union. He also won here in 2016.
On this Memorial Day Weekend, it is fitting to acknowledge is last USMTS win happened at the Ark-La-Tex Speedway in Vivian, La., on Sept. 11, 2020. He weighed in at 300 pounds that day, but 989 days later he picked up the win as a lean, mean 180-pound driving machine.
“It’s been a stepping stone process for me,” VanderBeek added. “I’ve been doing this a long time with a lot of these USMTS races under my belt, and sometimes I wonder if I should become a car owner and let somebody else drive it, but I’ve got an awesome program and team, and this is what I do.”
Tyler Wolff was sixth while Dylan Thornton raced from 16th on the grid to seventh and earned the FK Rod Ends Hard Charger Award. Cayden Carter was eighth, Dereck Ramirez rebounded from a mid-race incident to nab ninth and EL Paso’s Carlos Ahumada Jr. rounded out the top 10.