For the first time in five consecutive years racing in B.C. premier stock car class, Bob Williams won't have a top-two season finish to reflect upon.
Mark Berriau, on the other hand, has every reason to celebrate. The Penticton driver wrapped up the ARCA OK Tire Sportsman Series points championship in fine style, winning the season-ended race Saturday in Vernon.
Williams had his fate pretty much sealed nearly four months ago in Vernon on opening day when his car was destroyed in a wreck in a heat race. From that day on, the 52-year-old Prince George driver had to lower expectations on where he would end up in the series standings.
After missing two main events and being forced to the pits early with a blown engine in the third event of the ARCA tour, Williams did make a decent recovery.
"We're pretty happy with seventh place after three no-starts in main events this year," said Williams. "At one point we were back in 19th and our goal was to get to the top 10.
"After four seconds in a row, somebody else gets to be second place this year."
Berriau, the 2009 ARCA champion from Penticton, held off five-car train around the half-mile tri-oval at Sun Valley Speedway to cinch the title. Calvin Loudoun of Kelowna was second and Matt Stephenson of Kaleden placed third.
Berriau collected 70 points for his efforts Saturday to finish atop the standings with 318 points, 33 ahead of runner-up Ian Graham of Harrison Hot Springs and 55 in front of Stephenson, the 2010 series champion, who placed third. Graham, who trailed Berriau by just five points heading into Saturday's races, was well back of the leader, finishing 11th.
Coming off a main-event win July 16 in Quesnel and a 10th-place result Aug. 6 in Agassiz, Williams returned to Vernon to finish sixth in a 19-car field in the 100-lap feature race, ending up seventh in the driver standings.
"There was only three-tenths of second between first and sixth, we were just a pack that hung together the whole race," said Williams, the ARCA series race director.
"At Lap 90, there were six of us within 100 feet of each other. There wasn't much for a second groove and if you slipped up at all, somebody would be underneath you. I lost all my spots on restarts. We had four five restarts and I only the inside groove once."
The main event proved disastrous for Ryley Seibert of Williams Lake. Seibert started the day in third place, just 15 points back of Berriau, but got taken out in an accident on the first lap. His car suffering damage to a stabilizing bar in the rear end that forced him to drop put after 40 laps. Seibert ended up fifth in the standings.
Quesnel drivers Dave Olson and Darren Swaan also had a day to forget when track officials at Sun Valley Speedway disqualified them from the race during the Lap 1 caution for their failure to maintain a single line of traffic as they ducked into the the pits.
"The race track is on top of safety and they had given us a warning, but they took an extremely rigid policy on it," said Williams. "Generally, if a driver makes a mistake in running rules he's penalized lap or has to go to the back of the pack, but these guys were parked."
Swaan held on to sixth place but Olson dropped from seventh to ninth in the points. Logan Jewell of Prince George was seventh and finished tied for 11th in the points with former Prince George resident Bob Mear of Clearwater.
n Williams is entered in the Las Vegas North American Open set for Nov. 4 and 5 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The race will be on the three-eighths-mile oval known as the Bull Ring.
