Mike Leaty Wins Spencer Fan Appreciation Night RoC Sportsman Feature

Mike Leaty picked up his second victory in 2025 as part of the Race of Champions Family of Series, winning the RoC Sportsman Modified 35 on Fan Appreciation Night at Spencer Speedway on Friday.

Leaty took the lead from Andrew Lewis, Jr. after five laps and maintained the top spot for the remainder of the feature race. Already a winner this year in the RoC Modified Series at Lancaster Motorplex in the Ol' Boy Cup, Leaty carried that momentum into Friday's feature.

After going winless at Spencer Speedway during the 2024 season, the Williamson, New York native was eager to get back to victory lane at his hometown half-mile.

"The guys brought me a rocket tonight," said Leaty. "It's a lot of work. You know, we bring three cars here and not a lot of free time, but it's Fan Appreciation Night at Spencer Speedway. Thank you to all the fans for coming out.

"Sorry we didn't put on a good show. I mean, we can only control so much here, but we had fun up front. Andy, Jr. is a heck of a little race car driver. I have a couple of young kids that race, not too much younger than him, and he makes it look easy, right? My kids make it look how it's supposed to. It's hard. Everybody should give it a shot one time to see how hard it is.

"I've been doing it for 25 years. Each win is extra special because you don't know when it's going to be the last one. Last year was the first year I didn't win a race at Spencer Speedway my whole career, in 25 years. That was disappointing. We've been bringing fast cars everywhere we've raced this year. We haven't reaced a lot, but when we've been racing, we've been fast."

After leading the opening laps, Lewis, Jr. finished in the second position. That added to his points advantage in the RoC Sportsman Modifieds, which unofficially sits at 21 points over Kevin Timmerman following Friday's race.

"The 65 car was pretty good tonight," said Lewis, Jr. "Really good through the corner, just got motored down the straightaway.

"That's nice," he added regarding the points lead. "The more of a points lead, the better."

Andy Jankowiak rounded out the podium, giving him a pair of podium finishes in two RoC Sportsman Modified starts this season.

"We got a little bit different rules package that bites us a little bit here on the restarts," said Jankowiak. "We were just trying to keep up there. We were pretty good. We were actually really good in practice. We put the tires on and I just couldn't get stagger out of this set of tires. We had a really bad qualifying lap, so we kind of were fighting our way back. Never really quite to the stagger we wanted.

"I think if we were a touch better, we could have mixed it up with Andy a little bit. You know, P3, I think I'm leading the points at Lancaster, so I just really didn't want to crash tonight. The RoC series has a really good deal with this Sportsman deal. We've only got to buy one or two tires and the payout's really good."

Jankowiak will be back with RoC next weekend, when the Race of Champions Modified Series heads to Chemung Speedrome for the Night Before the Glen Rod Spalding Classic.

"We're going to be coming back and running Chemung with the ROC Modified Series," said Jankowiak. "So if you are going to the Glen, make sure on Saturday after the Busch race, you hightail over to Chemung. We'll be running Modifieds, check us out."

Andy Lewis finished fourth, with Timmerman rounding out the top five.

While the next RoC Modified Series event is Saturday, August 9 at Chemung, the RoC Sportsman Modifieds return to Spencer in two weeks time on August 15. It will be Apple Harvest Night at the Races, including RoC's Super Stocks, 602 Sportsman Modifieds, and the FOAR SCORE Four-Cylinder Dash Series.

-Photo credit: Race of Champions

Fan Appreciation Night 35 Unofficial Results