BROWNSTOWN, Ind. (Aug. 3) — Just two nights removed from his fourth-place finish in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series event at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn., returned to Brownstown Speedway victory lane, scoring a $10,000 victory in the Schaeffer’s MARS Racing Series-sanctioned Hall of Fame Classic.

Pulling ahead of outside polesitter Jason Jameson of Lawrenceburg, Ind., in turns one and two  on lap 41 of 50, Marlar led the remaining distance, holding off Jameson in late-race lapped traffic to capture his seventh victory of the season, his second at Brownstown.

“It’s been a crazy week here but it’s been a lot of fun,” Marlar said in victory lane. “I don’t remember ever having a better week, so it’s been awesome.”

Overtaking fellow front-row starter Kent Robinson of Bloomington, Ind., on the second lap, Jameson held a comfortable lead in the early running. As the frontrunners began working their way through the rear of the field, Marlar closed the gap between himself and Jameson, pulling alongside the race leader for the first time on lap 21.

As the race reached the halfway point, lapped traffic continued to be a factor, with Jameson extending his lead to more than a car length’s distance. But Marlar reeled in the race leader once again, the pair crossing the line nearly side-by-side on the 38th circuit. Slipping under Jameson just a couple of laps later, Marlar drove away to his first career MARS victory.

“Jason was really good,” Marlar said. “We took off there and I was trying to run around the bottom and I seen that I had softer tires because I thought that’s what I needed to do. So I was running down there for a little bit and it wasn’t working good. Jason was trucking on that outside, so I said, ‘I’m going to burn up a tire or catch him one here.’

“So I got up there and started running around there with him. I couldn’t even keep up with him and then all of a sudden, I don’t know if he had a problem or what it was, but he slowed down a bunch. I never picked up, he just slowed up. I was able to get by him by running the middle. After that, you know how Jason is, he finds another gear sometimes, so I thought, ‘Just ‘cause I’m in front don’t mean anything.’ So I really drove hard there at the end of the race.”

Jameson finished second with Greg Johnson of Bedford, Ind., charging from the eighth starting spot to run third. After leading the first lap and falling back in the early running, Robinson rallied to finish fourth, with Tanner English of Benton, Ky., closing the weekend with a top-five finish after winning Friday at Ponderosa Speedway in Junction City, Ky.

After a string of bad luck both on and off the racetrack, including his Rattliff Racing team losing a driveshaft in its hauler en route to the racetrack last weekend, Jameson wasn’t hanging his head over his runner-up finish.

“I lost a little traction, so then you try to drive it straighter and then you create a push and it started being a little bit of a handful to drive,” Jameson said. “But hats off to Mikey and them. He’s probably one of the best in the country right now. I’ll take second for what we’ve been going through this year.”

Advancing five positions, Johnson was among the night’s hard chargers, continuing his Brownstown success after scoring a victory in the July 27 Paul Crocket Memorial.

“We went a little bit too far on what we’ve been experimenting with,” Johnson said. “Once the crumbs got off the racetrack we was a little bit free. We’ve got to get our lumps. But we finished third to a couple of the best drivers in the country, so we’re not hanging our heads.”

Notes: Marlar scored his second Brownstown victory of 2019, his first coming in the June 27 DIRTcar Summer Nationals event. … The 50-lap feature ran caution-free. ... Chad Stapleton rolled his car during the night's third heat race; he was uninjured and used a provisional to start the feature. ... The Schaeffer's MARS Racing Series made its third stop at Brownstown on the 2019 season. ... Fourth-place finisher Kent Robinson’s No. 1A paint scheme paid tribute to Brownstown Hall of Fame inductee Doug Ault. ... Eighth-place finisher Nick Hoffman was the winner of the night's modified feature.