TIMMONSVILLE, S.C. (Aug. 29, 2025) -- Landen Lewis scores a pivotal victory in his bid for a CARS Tour championship, beating out Connor Hall to win the Late Model Stock portion of Friday's Cook Out 225 at Florence Motor Speedway.
Landen Lewis and Connor Hall traded the lead several times throughout the 125-lap feature, but it was Lewis around the outside on the Lap 95 restart, taking the top spot away from his championship rival and scoring his fourth win of the 2025 season.
"Honestly, I was fine with finishing second," said Lewis. "My heart, I don't want to run second, I wanna win every race I can -- we didn't have the best car and I was okay with that. That's the biggest difference between Hickory, Caraway, to now, I'm accepting that and developing into a better race car driver."
At Caraway and Hickory, Lewis's race aggression was heavily criticized by some of his competitors, and his finishes stunted the advantage he had in the title fight, but in the last two races, without controversy, the KHI driver was able to score back-to-back victories and regain control of the championship.
Coming into Florence, Connor Hall had the advantage in the championship fight, leading Landen Lewis by four points. After finishing runner-up to Lewis, Hall was asked about the final three races ahead and which he circled to take back control of the title fight, to which he responded: "All of them".
For the second straight race, zMAX CARS Tour owner and two-time DAYTONA 500 champion Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was featured in the field, and after a promising qualifying run, Earnhardt, Jr. would finish a disappointing 17th. Aside from Earnhardt's love of racing on the tour, the most important task at hand is growing the series as a whole.
"We love the grassroots connection," said Earnhardt. "We kind of know where we're gonna live and where our lane is, but we want purses to get bigger, we want our sponsorships and people investing in our series to get larger, and try to make this as affordable as possible. We're always talking about is the weekend schedule perfect? Is it convenient? Is it costing people unnecessary money? We work on the details like that."
In Earnhardt's previous outing at Anderson two weeks ago, he mentioned his admiration of dirt racing and the model they have in regards to procedures on race day.
"They're doing it right," said Earnhardt. "I'd have to get behind the curtain a little bit to see what they are charging teams for pit passes, licenses, entry fees. Their purses are really incredible. How are they giving themselves that opportunity? The crowds are great -- we get good crowds, but I can't run every week. When you get a series, man, I want to pull this lever and mash this button, or I want to change this or fix that, it's not as easy as it looks, and it just takes a while to change or get better., It's a slower process than I want it to be."
Florence Motor Speedway track champion, Casey Kelley, started from the pole position and would round out the podium with a third-place finish.
After starting from the pole, Keelan Harvick missed a shift on the initial start, but thankfully, the field was able to avoid calamity, and despite the mishap, Harvick was able to make the climb back to the lead and drive away with his second CARS Tour Pro Late Model victory of the season.
Harvick has had some extra seat time behind the wheel of a Pro Late Model throughout the Summer, in addition to running the majority of the CARS Tour events on the East Coast, he's also competed against his dad, Kevin Harvick, and won in the CARS Tour West. Keelen attributes his recent success to that extra seat time.
"It's definitely helped me overall be able to understand the car more, and just get comfortable in the car, and just the width of the car, it's helped me a lot," Harvick said about the extra experience.
Conner Jones finished in the runner-up position, while Tyler Reif came home third.
The zMAX CARS Tour will return to action on September 13 at South Boston Speedway.
-- Story by: Buddy Pulley
-- Photo Credit: CARS Tour
