Wednesday, May 5, 2010

BREAKING NEWS: Dupree Inherits Airborne Win After Inspection

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -- Patrick Dupree may have crossed the finish line second at Airborne Speedway on Saturday night, but he will ultimately walk away with a victory.

Defending track champion Martin Roy of Napierville, Que., dominated the 50-lap opening event for the Modified division, but was found to be in violation of the DIRTcar rulebook in a lengthy post-race inspection that concluded on Tuesday afternoon. DIRTcar is the sanctioning body that governs Airborne Speedway.

Airborne officials inspected the cylinder heads of the top-three finishers, but were unable to make a definitive decision on the legality of Roy's, Dupree's, and third-place finisher Richard Tisseur's parts. Airborne promoter Mike Perrotte had the heads of all three cars sent to DIRTcar headquarters for further inspection, where Roy and Tisseur's were found illegal.

Roy beat Dupree by 16 points for the Airborne championship in 2009. Both Roy's and Dupree's cars were similarly torn down and found illegal by DIRTcar for cylinder head violations following a non-points event after the championship was final in September, although no penalties were handed down beyond disqualification and loss of purse from the event.

Airborne Speedway spokeswoman Niki Bird said that any penalties levied against Roy or Tisseur beyond disqualification and loss of purse from Saturday's event are "in DIRTcar's hands."

Dupree, of Saranac Lake, N.Y., will inherit the victory for Saturday night's event. As the winner, Dupree also will be given an automatic starting spot in Super DIRT Week's 358 Modified event at Syracuse in October.

Greg Atkins of Clintonville, N.Y., is now be the official runner-up. The rest of the revised top five is completed by George Foley, Andy Heywood and Matt Woodruff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is going to get kind of interesting in a hurry. This is Roys second violation of the spec head rule in what is two straight races at Airborne for him. You have to wonder if Bob Dini(DIRTs Head tech man) will go to the rule book and give the one year suspension that the rulebook lays out ther.