Brittany Finley accepted plenty of autographs before and signed even more after becoming the first woman to win a division season championship at Gresham Motorsports Park Saturday night.
Finley, who had fans sign the hood of her No. 36 Truck division entry as part of a Susan G. Komen Foundation cancer awareness campaign prior to her race, rolled to a sixth-place finish in the Oct. 9 GMP Truck feature to win the 2010 Truck Division championship.
Finley totaled 1,275 points in eight GMP Truck events this season to win the title with 1,275 points. Joel Townsend was a strong second in the standings with 1,132 markers while Bill Hoose (1,100), Brandon
Franklin (1,097), Jeremy Parris (1,064) and Brian Huff (1.010) waged a furious battle for third through sixth in the final season-totals.
Meanwhile, Mike Garvey took home the Oct. 9 Pro Late Model victory, but Shawn Simpson grabbed an even bigger prize capturing the 2010 GMP PLM Division championship.
Simpson wheeled his way to a seventh-place finish in the season finale to take the top spot in the season chase over David Odell. Odell, the leader going into the season-ending Pro event, saw his title hopes dashed early in a grinding crash on the second lap of the event.
That gave Simpson the Pro Late Model season title over Odell by a 505-460 margin. James Nealis strung together a season-long steady effort including a 10th-place finish Saturday to come home third in the 2010 PLM standings with 440 points.
Doug Sexton had a good night and a bad night at GMP Oct. 9 depending on your perspective. Sexton had a spectacular wreck that inflicted serious damage to his Renegade Street Stock in the late going of that division’s main. Fortunately, Sexton was uninjured in the crash and was around afterward to accept congratulations on winning the 2010 GMP Renegade Division season championship.
Sexton totaled 1,260 points to grab the Renegade title over Jody Trivett, who scored 1,065 points. Nathaniel Carlisle (880), Jeremy Dills (765) and Brian Beckner (730) completed the top-five in the Renegade season standings at GMP.
Like Sexton, Spanky Hicks earned a championship while on the sidelines after his mount expired on Lap 3 of the 20-lap Mini Stock main event. Hicks was counting points as William Earnest, Bill George, Allen Cantrell, Ken Candiotti, Sr. and Avery Burgess took the top-five places in Saturday’s Mini headliner.
When all the points from the double points night were tabulated, Hicks still won the division title by a 1,280-1,123 margin over Candiotti, Sr. Steve Hill (1,038), Burgess (1,005) and George (935) completed the top-five finishers in the Mini Stock Division - one of the strongest classes at GMP this season with 31 total championship points’ competitors.
They joined David Murphy and Bubba Pollard as track champions for 2010. Murphy won the Outlaw Late Model title and Pollard the Super Late Model title at the season finale for those two divisions back on Sept. 18.
