We may only be one race in to the new zMAX CARS Tour season, but one championship contender has already had a potential season-defining moment.
After a career year with the CARS Tour in 2024, Ryan Millington entered 2025 as among the championship favorites – one of the few predicted to challenge JR Motorsports and Connor Hall for the title.
But last Saturday night at New River All-American Speedway, Millington’s campaign nearly went south just laps into the opening race.
Millington posted a solid qualifying lap in the afternoon and rolled off fifth. After a quick yellow at the start of the race, the field came back to green on a lap 5 restart, with Millington lined up sixth, outside the third row.
As it turned out, being on the outside row was a bad omen. Running second at the time, Jake Bollman missed a shift on the restart, causing an accordion in the outside lane. Millington piled into the back of Bobby McCarty, and was hit from behind by Jared Fryar.
While the nose of Millington’s No. 15 was still intact, the entire left-rear panel of the car had been detached after contact from Fryar. His Saville Millington Motorsports team got to work under the open red period that followed the incident, reattaching the fender and replacing the back glass of the racecar with a crush panel and a healthy heap of tape.
Photo from Ryan Millington’s Facebook
From there, the comeback was one. Millington drove the roughed-up racecar to a fifth-place finish at night’s end, ending his eventful night exactly where it started.
Consistency is key, and we may look back at this as a moment that helped Millington contend for the title at season’s end. A fifth-place result earned Millington 37 points on the night. Had he suffered a DNF on lap five, he would have walked away with a mere five points, leaving 32 points on the board.
To put into perspective how massive that can be, the CARS Tour Late Model Stock championship has been decided by 15 points or less in eight of the 10 seasons the series has been in operation.
“It was a long night,” Millington told Frontstretch after the race. “But overall I guess I’d call it a successful night. We started fifth and were kind of running right there when someone missed a shift like five to 10 laps in, we got her all wadded up and had to come down in the pits. We got got it patched back up pretty well.
“They came over the radio and told us I was gonna have to come back down the pits and put the rear glass back on it that broke off of it. … Then the yellow came back out and they told me I didn’t have to come down to the pits.”
Saturday’s effort was a new one for this writer. I’ve never seen a late model – or any racecar, for that matter – continue racing with the back glass completely replaced by duct tape. To come back and finish fifth in said car is unheard of.
But with the help of the CARS Tour’s open red rule, Millington and company made it happen, possibly saving their season in the process.
It’s still too early to tell if the performance will have any effect on the championship battle, but one thing is certain. It’s a moment none of us will forget any time soon.
Chase began working with Frontstretch in the spring of 2023 as a news writer, while also helping fill in for other columns as needed. Chase is now the main writer and reporter for Frontstretch.com's CARS Tour coverage, a role which began late in 2023. Aside from racing, some of Chase's other hobbies include time in the outdoors hunting and fishing, and keeping up with all things Philadelphia sports related.