MECHANICSBURG
 Stevie Smith had the best seat in the house towards the end of Friday night’s O’Reilly All Star Circuit of Champions event at Williams Grove Speedway.

 While Smith’s brother in law Brian Leppo led 29 laps but it was Smith who stole the lead on the final lap from Leppo and then held on for a photo finish over Leppo.

 The win was worth $5,000 to Smith, who resides in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and was his 23rd career Williams Grove feature win. It was the 22nd straight win by a Pennsylvania Posse car over the traveling series.

 “Brian deserves a lot of credit because he had a really good race car,” said Smith, who has two wins on the season in the John and PeeWee Zemaitis owned machine. “When you’re leading, you’re trying to conserve the race and not give it away and sometimes it’s an advantage for the second place car. I had nothing to lose to try and get by him.”

 Leppo had the field covered for most of the event, racing out to big leads two times before lapped traffic allowed Smith and the rest of the top five to close on him over the final few laps.

 The race was red flagged before a lap could be completed when Don Kreitz slowed in turn two forcing cars to take evasive action. Tyler Walker and Rick Lafferty both got upside in the seven car melee.

 Leppo was in heavy traffic on lap 17 when Doug Esh blew a  motor to bring out a yellow flag, which gave Leppo a clear race track.

 Smith got by Chad Layton on the restart and set his sights on Leppo, who again pulled away from the field.

 But with traffic factoring into the event, Leppo tried to get around the slower car of David Gravel but got sideways allowing Smith to move into the lead.

 “Brian moved down for the lapped car and I was able to get right on his bumper,” said Smith. “He actually surprised me when he got beside me down there in two. I thought he was gonna come up in front of me but he stopped in the middle and really threw me off guard so that was a pretty good move but we had just enough momentum to keep in front of him.”

 Smith won the drag race off turn four and won by just inches.

 Brian Montieth came from the 10th starting spot to finish third over Daryn Pittman and new track points leader Fred Rahmer.

 Alan Krimes, Greg Hodnett, Chad Layton, Lance Dewease and All Star point leader and defending series champion Tim Shaffer completed the top 10.

 Pittman paced the 35-car field in time trials with a lap of 16.800 seconds.

 Heat races were won by Aaron Ott, Montieth, Gravel and Justin Henderson with Jim Siegel topping the B-Main.