Cabral wins Thompson and takes his fifth NEMA championship

Kingston's Randy Cabral made up for his lack of another NEMA championship last year by an aggressive campaign in 2014. (Credit: tjs sideways.com photo)

Kingston’s Randy Cabral made up for his lack of another NEMA championship last year by an aggressive campaign in 2014. (Credit: tjs sideways.com photo)

By Lou Modestino

Randy Cabral of Kingston didn’t need to win on Sunday to notch another NEMA championship,
but you wouldn’t have guessed it the way he raced through the field and took the lead in the 25
lap feature at Thompson’s World Series. It was his sixth win of 2014. He also added to his
record 10 wins at the Connecticut oval, while winning his fifth championship in 7 years.

Cabral led a Bertrand Motorsports assault, with his teammates finishing
second and fifth. Cabral could have clinched the championship with a decent finish in qualifying, but heats for the midgets were cancelled on Saturday due to a lengthy rain delay. NEMA started Sunday with a 20 minute warm-up session.

It only took Cabral 8 laps to run down and pass early leader John Zych of Mendon. Zych stayed within a few car lengths of Cabral. When the caution came out on lap 14 for a spin by Jim SantaMaria of Burlington, CT, it allowed Zych the opportunity to restart alongside Cabral.

Zych regained the lead until another caution 3 laps later. This one for a slowing Bethany Stoehr
of Bridgewater, who had a solid top 5 run going until the car broke. On the restart, Zych’s
car bobbled and shot to the infield entering turn 1. He slid back up onto the track in the
middle of traffic. Everyone was able to get by, but Zych was done due to steering problems,
retiring to pit road.

Cabral then opened a comfortable lead, but that was negated by the final caution on lap 21 for an
incident involving Scott Bigelow of E. Hampton, CT that landed him against the inside retaining
wall just out of turn 4.

The single file restart put second place driver and Cabral teammate for the day Cole Carter right
on Cabral’s bumper. Carter stayed with Cabral through the first and second turn, but Randy
turned up the heat on the backstretch and cruised to victory.

Carter finished second, followed by Danny Cugini of Marshfield in third, Jim Chambers of
Atkinson, NH fourth and Cabral teammate Todd Bertrand fifth.

Cabral wons his fifth NEMA championship in 7 seasons, all of which accomplished by driving
equipment owned by Tim Bertrand. After starting the season with 2 DNF’s, he rarely finished out
of the top 3, picking up 5 wins.

He had been point battling another consistent finisher, Avery Stoehr of Lakeville. Stoehr had never finished out of the top 10 all season until Sunday, 7 of those were top 5 and got 2 wins along the way.

Champion Cabral and NEMA Lite champion Ryan Krachun of Neshanic Station, NJ will be honored at the annual awards banquet on November 22 in Marlborough.