Jade Avedisian scores Super Late Model win at New Smyrna
- MARCO ALBERTINI
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
In her first race weekend of the year, 19-year-old Californian rising star Jade Avedisian achieved her first Super Late Model career win at New Smyrna Speedway at the second night of the World Series of Asphalt.
Ahead of her rookie part-time season in the ARCA Menards Series for Nitro Motorsports, Jade Avedisian competed in the New Smyrna-based World Series of Asphalt to kick off her racing season for Wilson Motorsports.
Qualifying fifth for the opening feature race of the weekend on Saturday, Avedisian initially slipped to sixth on the opening lap, but quickly made progress to get herself up to fourth by lap ten, before two caution periods bunched up the field. During the second, brought out by George Phillips' spin, Cory Hall went into the pits to serve a penalty for a restart violation, before pulling into the garage, thus promoting Avedisian up to third ahead of the second restart.
A strong second restart from Avedisian saw her battle with Spencer Davis for second, but it came to blows at the start of the following lap, as she was shoved into the outside wall on the exit of Turn 4 and sustained heavy right-side damage and dropped to fourth. Despite the damage, Avedisian fought valiantly to remain in contention inside the top 10, culminating in a seventh-place finish in her first race of the year, just behind NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Preece.
On Sunday morning, Wilson Motorsports repaired the car in time for the second feature race of the weekend, in which she lined up third behind Casey Roderick and Davis.
Building up on her impressive speed from Saturday, Avedisian had a strong start, keeping third in the opening laps before overtaking Davis for second on lap five at Turn 1, as she set off to catch Roderick for the lead.
The Californian quickly caught up to Roderick, passing him at Turn 4 on lap nine to take the lead and pull away from the rest of the field. Despite initially growing the lead, lapped traffic and a hard-charging Dawson Sutton put pressure on Avedisian, who kept her cool to win the 60-lap feature by 0.637 seconds over Sutton to take her first Super Late Model win of her career.
"[It] feels great," Avedisian said after the race. "This whole Wilson [Motorsports] team had to get up here at 7 in the morning just to get it back together from last night, so I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. So, thanks to Dennis and everyone on this #24 car for everything they do for me, Mobil 1, Toyota Racing and it's a big group effort and my focus is set on Tuesday and I just want to win that race so bad."
"I was pretty aware of [Sutton closing in] thanks to Jacob, I tried to manage my gap and keep everything connected," Avedisian added. "That's something I struggled with in the past and it feels good to finally put a race together, I know it was only 60 laps, but it's still something."
Avedisian currently sits second in the World Series of Asphalt Super Late Model standings after two races, five points behind Davis. Super Late Models will return to action on Wednesday and Thursday, as two other 60-lap features will be held towards the end of each day on Nights 6 and 7 of the World Series of Asphalt program.
