Stephen Nasse Wins Elusive Snowball Derby Crown Following Ty Majeski Penalty

After a late black-flag for a jumped restart issued to Ty Majeski, Stephen Nasse claimed the 58th Annual Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway.

Majeski largely dominated Monday's race, leading more than 200 of the race's 300 laps. However, race officials determined Majeski jumped consecutive attempts at a restart with 11 laps to go.

After the second restart, Majeski was shown the black flag, with Nasse then scored as the leader. The Pinellas Park, Florida native held off All American 400 winner Dawson Sutton to score the victory in the prestigious Super Late Model event.

On one hand, there was the celebration of Nasse's first Snowball Derby victory in his 14th event. The Tom Dawson Trophy eluded Nasse in every way imaginable, including a disqualification in post-race technical inspection in 2019. In 2023, Nasse led late before an incident with Bubba Pollard in the closing laps took both drivers out of contention, turning to victory over to Majeski.

Perhaps those tribulations made Nasse particularly empathetic towards Majeski, but it also made this win that much sweeter.

"I hate it for Ty," said Nasse in victory lane on the FloRacing broadcast. "He had a really good car. I don't know if we would have been able to get by him, but I'll take it like this. I gave him one before, he gave me one now. Man, I'm just tickled pink right now.

"This is amazing. I never thought I'd get back here. It just feels damn good."

Nasse finished second to Kaden Honeycutt one year ago in the Snowball Derby after starting 30th. Another second-place finish, to Kyle Busch in the Last Chance Qualifier on Saturday, secured Nasse's spot in the show for Monday's race, starting 32nd.

Despite another poor qualifying effort, Nasse charged into the top 10 within the first 75 laps of the race postponed to Monday by rain. By the halfway point, he was up to second. He stayed in the top 10 the rest of the way, but didn't lead a lap until Majeski was shown the black flag.

Nasse first raced in the Derby in 2011, then just 16 years old. He had finished in the top 10 each of the last four years, including salvaging a sixth-place finish after the late crash in 2023. Now, he's a Snowball Debry winner.

"It means everything," said Nasse. "This is really important to me and my family, my sisters, my niece, my nephews, aunts, uncles, just everybody. My whole crew. I'm happy to finally get it done. It's been a long, hard-fought few years. Between my sponsors and all you fans, we finally pulled through.

"I've been saying for the back half of the year that this would make up for my winless season. It damn sure does."

Following the black flag, Majeski stayed on track for the closing laps, crossing the finish line ahead of Nasse and parking his car on the frontstretch along with the podium finishers.

While Nasse celebrated, Majeski expressed his frustration with the late-race call while interviewed by FloRacing.

"I don't know," said Majeski. "I feel like I was being pretty consistent. The first one, I certainly jumped. We got chatter that the 51 was going to try and jump, and I was trying to anticipate that. We got a mulligan.

"The rule is to pick up the pace to the line. I thought I did that. The rule, as written, is not black and white. It leaves a lot of questions, balls-and-strikes calls. I don't know."

Majeski protested the ruling, taking his car to technical inspection following the race. Race officials did not overturn the penalty.

"To begin with, there is no appeals process for an in-race call like that, because there's no way to correct it," explained race director Nicholas Rogers in an interview with Matt Weaver. "If it happened on lap 10, there'd be penalties involved, we'd have parked him or brought him in by then. There's no way to appeal that in-race like there would be a tech infraction or something like that.

"The first time it happened, it was obvious, two and a half car lengths, probably. He admitted very candidly, yes, I did jump that one, didn't argue that at all. The second one, he rolls through there, way closer, probably a half to three-quarters, but coming off an immediate warning, waving it off and warning him to make sure he's in the box. It's clearly stated.

"The rule book says a slow, steady increase from turn three to the box. He tried to argue, well, that's my increase. When you pull away from another car rapidly, that's not an increase. We had an official, our head tech official, Freddie Query in three, immediately said he jumped.

"That is one of the hardest calls a race director can make, just because of the angles, you can't hear the engines, you have to judge off the cars around him a lot of times. Getting confirmation from a senior official sitting down there within eyeshot of it backed up what all of us in the tower already saw, so the penalty was issued for the black flag."

Dawson Sutton nearly scored another crown jewel win in what has been a breakthrough season for the Tennessee native. Instead, he settled for a second-place finish that was tantalizingly close to a victory.

"It feels terrible, but I just can't thank my Rackley W.A.R. team enough for giving me such a fast race car all weekend," said Sutton. "This is my dream to win this race. It really just sucks to finish second, but hopefully, we can come back next year and hopefully get a win.

"It was just a really up-and-down day. I'm honestly just thankful to finish second. I don't even know where we were running about halfway through that race, but I fell back really far. I'm super thankful to climb my way back up and second in this race."

Like Nasse, Jake Garcia raced his way into the main event through Saturday's Last Chance Qualifier during an eventful week persistently plagued by rainfall. The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series competitor overcame that to finish third, his first top-five finish in the event since 2019 when he was runner-up to Travis Braden following Nasse's disqualification that year.

"I want to thank my guys for giving me a really good race car," said Garcia. "We made good adjustments between the LCQ and the race and got up front pretty quickly. We were up to second pretty early in the race.

"I felt like we were really good, competitive with the 51 [of Nasse] and 26 [of Sutton]. I just had a restart there where we were stuck on the top, behind some slow cars and fell back quite a bit and lost a bunch of track position there.

"Third isn't what we're satisfied with, but overall, it's a good day for us. Looking forward to the next one, for sure."

Kasey Kleyn finished fourth, with Jake Finch rounding out the top five.

Preston Peltier started on the pole for the event and unofficially led 58 laps, more than double the number of laps he had led in the event in his career before Monday. The veteran driver finished eighth.

After not serving his black flag, Majeski was not scored for the final five laps of the race. With his appeal unsuccessful, Majeski was credited with 23rd in the final running order, five laps down.

The postponement of the event led to two drivers withdrawing from the event due to prior commitments: Max Reaves and NASCAR Cup Series competitor Ryan Preece. Reaves was scheduled to start 19th, while Preece had qualified 27th.

While the 58th Snowball Derby is in the books one day later than anticipated, more racing remains at Five Flags Speedway. With the constant rainfall throughout the past week, several Snowball Derby features for support divisions take place on Tuesday, December 9.

Racing begins at 4 p.m. CT/5 p.m. ET at Five Flags on Tuesday for the Modifieds of Mayhem Tour, Pro Trucks, Pure Stock, Crown Stock and Sportsman divisions.

-Photo credit: Will Bellamy

58th Annual Snowball Derby Unofficial Results