Ken Schrader is still racing, and he found out on Monday night that he still knows the way to the victory podium.
The 68-year-old Schrader surprised the field to win the NASCAR Pinty’s Series Freshstone Dirt Classic at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario, Canada. The win was his first in NASCAR competition since a 1995 Craftsman Truck Series win at Saugus (Calif.) Speedway.
Schrader, the first non-Canadian to win in the Pinty’s Series, is now the oldest winner in a NASCAR-sanctioned race. Harry Gant is the oldest driver to win at NASCAR’s top level, as he won a NASCAR Cup race at the age of 52 at Michigan in 1992.
Schrader will try to make it two in a row in the Pinty’s Series tonight at Ohsweken.
The four-time Cup Series winner passed defending race winner and Pinty’s points leader Treyten Lapcevich with 25 laps to go in the 100-lap race after Lapcevich made contact with the lapped car of Michael Goudie.
“They got into each other,” Schrader said after the race. “I mean, they kind of got into each other. (Lapcevich) had us all day. We worked together on restarts. I said, ‘If he wants to start on the inside, he can get going and I’ll make sure he cleared me.’
“Then when we got the lead, I said, ‘Now, we’re racing. I’m not just riding.’ So I kinda had to go to work then.”
Schrader, who also races in the Superstar Racing Experience, last won in the ARCA Menards Series in 2015 at the age of 59.
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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