With Hollywood Dayton Raceway midway through its inaugural meet, Chris Page has narrowly nudged ahead of Dan Noble in the chase for the driver’s dash title.
Page scored a grand slam with four victories on the Wednesday night program, the 28th of 57 scheduled this season, to grab the ever-so-slight lead by a 54-52 win tally. Josh Sutton ranks third with 39 victories, Kayne Kauffman fourth with 29, and Kyle Ater fifth with 28. The top 10 also includes Greg Grismore, Jason Brewer and Jeremy Smith (27 each), Randy Tharps (26), and Shawn Barker (11).
On the trainer’s side, Virgil Morgan Jr. is attempting to sweep the 2014 Miami Valley, Scioto Downs and Dayton Raceway meets. The winningest trainer in Ohio racing history, Morgan Jr. has 20 wins in the first half of the Dayton meet. He’s followed in the top 10 by Conor Flynn (18), Jeff Brewer (14), Steve Carter and Chris Short (10), and a fivesome of conditioners with six wins each -- Dan Ater, Earl Buschelman, Jim Dailey, Terry Deters and Christi Pokornowski.
An incredible number of drivers -- 95 -- have circled the new Dayton five-eighths mile oval in the first 28 nights. An even more astounding number of trainers have tried their hand at harness racing’s newest venue -- 352. Of that total, 145 have already won at least one race.
The percentage of winning favourites to date is 37.68 with the No. 5 post position producing the most winners (62), followed by the two-hole (59), one-hole (58), three-hole (50) and four-hole (43).
(Dayton)