When the zMAX CARS Tour makes it’s annual stop at Larry King Law’s Langley Speedway, everyone expects a show. This past Saturday (May 31) night, the Tour delivered.
At long last, @ChaseBurrow00 is a @CARSTour LMSC winner! He takes the honors at @LangleySpeedway!#CARSTour pic.twitter.com/mE0YREKd2f
— FloRacing (@FloRacing) June 1, 2025
A night filled with hard racing, plenty of tempers and even a weather delay produced yet another first time winner, something the track has managed fairly often in its history with the Tour. This time around, it was track regular Chase Burrow picking up his first career CARS win.
While Burrow celebrated his breakthrough triumph, multiple championship contenders had struggles and tempers boiled over both on the track and pit road.
Here are three takeaways from the Visit Hampton 125 at Langley.
Home Track Heroics Land Burrow In CARS Tour Victory Lane
As we mentioned before, Langley has a history of wild races and upset winners. Burrow is just the latest of that category.
A former dirt racer turned Late Model Stock regular, Burrow has had his fare share of close calls with victory lane.
Much like in 2024, Burrow and Sellers Racing have decided to pick and choose Tour starts for 2025, also running local shows at Langley and Dominion Raceway. With all the laps the team have put down at Langley this season, this race offered a chance to utilize a hometown advantage.
Burrow put the No. 00 inside of row two for the start of the 125-lap feature, thanks to a third-place effort in qualifying. After a quiet first half, Burrow stormed to the front in the late stages while others struggled for grip around the 0.397-mile speedway. Burrow led the final 28 laps to score his first ever CARS win, joining Kaden Honeycutt and Brenden Queen as first time Tour winners at the track.
“I hope it (builds) a lot of momentum for sure,” Burrow told Frontstretch post-race. “We’ve been really good. We’ve been really close. It’s just this CARS Tour is so close that you can be close, and still be 18th. So to be close enough to contend for a win and do it is awesome.”
It’s been a long time coming for the King William, Va., native, and the win is even more sweet coming at the track that Burrow calls home. It also serves the question: is Langley the greatest equalizer on the CARS schedule?
The argument could certainly made, as no other track sees as much success in the series from the local competitors as Langley. While Queen and Connor Hall are stars of the sport, they both call Langley home and always had great success when the Tour has gone to Hampton.
Just this past Saturday, former track champion Matt Waltz won the pole and picked up a top-three finish, while Ryley Music had a strong run going before an accident near half-way.
While NASCAR has superspeedway racing, maybe the CARS Tour has Langley as its great equalizer. Burrow’s win is living proof of that.
Tempers Flare In the Midfield
While Burrow ran away with the win, there were plenty of drivers unhappy throughout the 23-car field in the closing stages.
It all started when Justin Carroll and Landon Huffman tangled with 11 laps to go. Huffman and Carroll traded a few bumps and nudges in the laps prior, but on that lap Huffman turned Carroll off of turn 4 – in part thanks to a power slide by Ronnie Bassett Jr. in front of them.
On the following restart, Carroll got to the rear bumper of Huffman multiple times before finally spinning the No. 57 with five laps to go, an incident eerily similar to the original and one that was clearly in retaliation. Both drivers expressed their frustrations post race.
“(Carroll) and the No. 04 I guess got together and I was right there,” Huffman told Frontstretch. “I was already planning on trying to get back into him, not turn him obviously. When he checked up it spun him around. After that, he was just acting like a damn idiot, crashing me for last. That’s stupid shit, I don’t understand that. I guess when you don’t run up front much, you pass one car and you get super excited.”
“Turning someone on the front straightaway, that’s dirty,” Carroll told Frontstretch. “When I got back to him I just returned the favor. These guys want to push around, last time I was out here I got shoved around and you know, I’m just not gonna take it.”
The spin for Huffman set up another restart, where Conner Jones and Parker Eatmon tangled in the closing laps. Jones was visibly frustrated and walked up to Eatmon post-race. A few punches were thrown before the two were quickly separated.
“I went up to talk to him and he grabbed me,” Jones told Frontstretch. “Stuff kind of happens. … It’s hard to [have a conversation] when it’s never his fault”
“I got to him and passed him pretty cleanly for Langley I would say,” Eatmon said of the incident. “He drove in there over his head and put me to the third lane in 3 and 4. … I got back to him about two to go, got into his door and drove right around him to finish eighth. He wasn’t too happy about it, but that’s typical Conner Jones.”
💥Post-race FIGHT at Langley! Conner Jones and Parker Eatmon get into it after the CARS Tour race.
— ATYL Media (@ATYLmedia) June 1, 2025
🎥: @BuddyPulley pic.twitter.com/CxY1P7pbag
These weren’t the only incidents on the night. Brandon Pierce was unhappy with Carson Loftin thanks to contact that sent Pierce spinning. Music was frustrated with Waltz after his crash in the early stages.
All of this is just part of the beast that is Langley. When you have a track that produces so much close-quarters racing, frustrations are bound to rise. Saturday wasn’t the first example and it certainly won’t be the last.
A Missed Opportunity For Points Leader Landen Lewis
Landen Lewis was nearly perfect in the month of May. He had a win at Ace Speedway, a flag-to-flag victory at North Wilkesboro Speedway and was well on his way to another win at Langley.
It just wasn’t meant to be.
Lewis dominated the early portion of the event, but suffered from a mechanical failure shortly after the rain delay was lifted just past the halfway point. Fortunately for Lewis, many of the other title contenders stumbled late in the going.
Still, having a chance at three straight wins ripped away by a mechanical failure stung for the Kevin Harvick Inc. driver.
“We had trouble really from lap 5,” Lewis told Frontstretch. “We were fighting something, it wouldn’t get off the chip. I don’t really know what was going on, we’ve got to take it back to the shop and figure it out. It finally bit us right there when it was time to count. Sucks, but we’ll move on, you can’t hang your head on it.”
Lewis and Rodney Childers have been lights out fast since Childers came on board. The KHI driver is fully aware that Childers likely will be moving back to the NASCAR ranks in the near future. But, that doesn’t mean Lewis can’t try to keep Childers around as long as he can.
“He’s such a good person,” Lewis said. “Good at what he does, he needs a job in the Cup Series for sure. Not right now though, obviously. I need him a lot longer til the end of the year.”
That advantage may be necessary. Lewis will now find himself mired in a dogfight for the points lead. Hall, Bassett, Huffman and Kade Brown all gained ground at the top of the standings.
What’s Next?
The Tour will take a weekend off before heading up to the northernmost track on the schedule, Dominion Raceway, on Saturday, June 14. The Tour announced this past week that the Pro Late Models will no longer race at track, so only the Late Model Stock cars will take the trip up to northern Virginia. All coverage from Dominion can be found live on FloRacing.
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.