× Thanks for reading! Log in to continue. Enjoy more articles by logging in or creating a free account. No credit card required. Log in Sign up {{featured_button_text}}

MARTINSVILLE - Two drivers finished Saturday night feeling like they had won the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville Speedway.

But only one of them took home the check and trophy to prove it.

Many drivers and fans were left unhappy after 218 laps had been run Saturday night. The drivers went through three overtime periods, the maximum allowed under race rules. On the final green-white-checkered attempt, a third incident on the restart brought out a final caution, and after a lengthy delay it was determined the No. 02 car of CE Falk was the leader of the last completed lap and had a driveable car to cross the checkered flag, which gave him the win over the No. 78 of Corey Heim.

Cameras through the stadium showed Heim was ahead of Falk when the caution came out, making him and others think he was deserving of the win, despite the rules stating otherwise. The confusion brought out anger among fans as Falk ceremoniously crossed the finish line behind the pace car.

Heim congratulated Falk on the win, but wasn’t shy about his feelings after the race.

“I’d like to start off by congratulating CE and his wife, they wanted it just as much as I did if not more,” Heim said. “I don’t know how many races I’ve got across the line first and had it taken away from me but just congratulations to the people who ended up winning it. Sometimes it’s just one of those deals but it just seems like consistency at this point.”

Heim said point blank he felt like he was the winner.

“I think I did,” he said. “Nothing wrong with the 02, he gave it all he had and he got the benefit of the doubt there. I was leading when the caution came out and even though that’s not the rule I don’t think I still feel like that should be the rule. Racing aside, if it goes back to the last completed lap instead of it being official at the caution, come on, it’s kind of ridiculous if you think about it.”

Heim said he’s been in other races that he felt like he was the winner and had it taken from him. Falk said he’s also been in situations like that, it was this time he finally got on the right end of a controversy.

At the end of the day, Falk was the one taking home the Grandfather Clock. He’s been coming to Martinsville as a driver for 13 years, and as a kid watched his dad race there.

“We all come here wanting to win it but it’s like winning the freaking lottery, and we did,” Falk said. “We missed the wrecks, we were up front all night long and my team did it. We might not have had the very best car but we were there when it counted and this is something I’ll cherish the rest of my life.”

During the time between the final caution and the announcement Falk was the winner, he said he expected a different outcome.

“Considering how my career has gone I was pretty much counting on not being scored the winner,” he said. “But just putting faith in higher beings and yourself, like I told my guys on the radio if it didn’t go our way, that’s okay. The car rolls back on the trailer, thank God.

“The restart before was when I kind of realized they were probably going to just use the line because I lost a spot on the last restart to put us in position to miss that last wreck. So they told us on the radio ‘next restart wins it’ so I said ‘I have to get the best restart of my life.’ And that’s what counted. Man, this is just an amazing feeling, guys, you have no idea.”

The finish wasn’t the only controversy. On the second overtime caution, Layne Riggs tried to go three-wide on the restart in Turn 1, forcing Peyton Sellers and Bubba Pollard up the track, knocking Pollard out of the race and damaging Sellers' car. Sellers, Pollard and Riggs were running 1-2-3 at the time.

Riggs was disqualified from the race because of the incident, and Pollard had words for him after.

After approaching Riggs' pit stall, Pollard was ejected from the Speedway.

Sellers, from Danville, finished fifth, but won the Virginia Late Model Triple Crown for highest annual finish at Martinsville, South Boston and Langley Speedways. Sellers won an additional $10,000 with the Triple Crown victory.

“I’m walking out of Martinsville Speedway tonight with my head held high,” Sellers said. “We had an awesome car tonight, had momentum all night long, made some awesome changes… to win the Triple Crown is a real honor. It’s a privilege to be in some big names in Virginia drivers and I just hope this puts my name in the history books.”

The incident with Riggs was a surprise to Sellers, who said until that point he was looking forward to racing hard against him and Pollard.

“I was just going into Turn 1 as low as I could. I assume he thought he was cleared because he took a pretty abrupt left,” Sellers said of Riggs. “At no point did I think I was going to move him out of the way or anything like that. I was looking forward to dueling it out with him. I knew he was going to have a lot of speed on the high side and I was actually looking forward to racing him to the end.”

Sellers is still looking for his first victory at Martinsville, but nudged current national champion Philip Morris for the Triple Crown win. Morris was near the front when he sustained damage on one of the overtime restarts, and finished 12th.

“The goal coming in here is first and foremost the clock and keeping the clock here in Ridgeway at Clarence’s Steakhouse, but definitely the triple crown was on my mind the whole time,” Sellers said. “You come to Martinsville, you see the clock and you have to beat Philip Morris to do it, and tonight if I beat him and got the clock I was going to the triple crown too. The cards just feel in our favor tonight. The chances of him getting in that wreck and falling back in the end was a blessing… we drove from the back and got in a lot of accidents and back-and-forth and beat up fenders and stuff like that and we persevered the entire night.”

Nelson Motorsports driver Brandon Pierce finished third, and Trevor Ward was fourth.

Fellow Nelson drivers Timothy Peters, who won the Late Model race in 2017, was 24th and Bobby McCarty was 39th after completing just 87 laps.

Pollard finished 26th. Mike Looney, 2016 winner, finished 29th after completing 197 laps. Looney was a involved in an incident on the front stretch with Jeff Oakley that forced the first overtime.

Drivers were all going for broke for what Falk called the Daytona 500 of Late Model races. In the end, he was the one who avoided it all the most.

“You have 40 guys all trying to win this thing and you’ve got a handful trying to do it again because it felt so good,” he said. “For a lot of us this is the lasts race of the year. You’ve got all year to fix it so why not go for broke. That’s what I told my guys on the radio, we got through that last wreck and we got on the radio and I said ‘it doesn’t matter what happens, I had no idea we’d be in this position.’ You always want to be but to put yourself in that position, it doesn’t even matter anymore. We’re doing it and we’re top level. It’s just amazing.”

Cara Cooper is a sports writer for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at cara.cooper@martinsvillebulletin.com

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.