LAKE CITY, Mich. (Aug. 27) — When Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., slid into turns three and four on the final circuit of Sunday night’s 75-lap Keyser’s Great Lakes Shootout finale at Merritt Speedway, he couldn’t help experiencing flashbacks to his heartbreaking last-lap loss on the same quarter-mile oval just 24 hours earlier.

With the driver who stole the previous evening’s 30-lap weekend opener from Madden — his good buddy Shane Clanton of Zebulon, Ga. — closely tailing him again, the possibility of another bitter defeat felt all too real.

Alas, Madden, 42, survived a scare in the race’s fleeting moments to capture the caution-free, extra-distance World of Outlaws Craftsman Late Model Series A-main, earning him a cool $15,000 first-place prize to soothe the pain of leading all but the last lap of Saturday night’s feature.

After overtaking Clanton for the lead on lap 51, Madden held on to cross the finish line 0.559 of a second before Saturday’s $6,000 winner. It was Madden’s fifth WoO triumph of 2017 — tying him with Clanton for the second-highest total on the national tour — and the 14th of his career.

Runaway WoO points leader Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., started and finished third, more than three seconds behind Madden at the checkered flag in his Rocket Chassis house car. He looked strong early while leading laps 11-17 but fell to third two circuits after ceding the top spot and stayed there for the remainder of the distance.

Rick Eckert of York, Pa., inched forward from the seventh starting spot to reach fourth place with a lap-29 pass of Longview, Texas’s Morgan Bagley and finished there in Paul Crowl’s Longhorn Race Car. Ninth-starter Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, slipped past Bagley for fifth late in the distance to complete the top five in Tye Twarog’s XR1 Rocket.

Madden, who had never previously raced at Merritt, felt fortunate to avoid back-to-back losses to Clanton.

“That lapped traffic was hairy there at the end,” said Madden, who started on the outside pole in his Longhorn Race Car and only briefly ran in third place early in the feature. “I got into three and four a little hot right there (on the last lap), and the guy I was trying to lap, I thought he was gonna go to the top and then he decided to come to the bottom and I had to get on the binders hard.

“So it left the door wide open for Shane. If he would’ve been right there, he would’ve been able to make the pass again with one to go.”

While Clanton had been able to cut Madden’s steady late-race edge of around 1 second in half by the time the white flag was displayed, he didn’t have his Ron Davies-owned Capital Race Car close enough to Madden to take advantage of the leader’s momentary burp on the final circuit.

Clanton, who has spent much of the 2017 WoO schedule traveling up-and-down the road alongside Madden, acknowledged with a smile that beating his pal in dramatic fashion for a second straight night might have made things a bit awkward between them.

“Lapped traffic messed him up a little bit,” Clanton said, noting the reason he even had a shot at sweeping the weekend. “He would’ve been mad if I passed him on the last lap again.”

Madden was certainly happy to leave Michigan a winner.

“We had a good car,” Madden said. “We started out a little bit slow, but we just bided our time and waited for the car to come to us.”

Madden offered thanks to his two-member crew, which notably included Clanton’s brother-in-law Dan Davies, a western Pennsylvania open-wheel modified driver who is the son of Clanton’s car owner, and Collin Pasi. The pair provided much needed pit-area assistance to Madden, who was left searching for crew help after the recent departure of his regular mechanics.

“Collin and Dan Davies, appreciate you guys very much,” Madden said in victory lane. “You guys have been a blessing to me and I appreciate it.”

Clanton, who celebrates his 42nd birthday on Aug. 29, settled for a runner-up finish after starting from the pole position and leading laps 1-10 and 18-50.

“Overall, we had a good car and it was a good race,” Clanton said. “It was whoever got through lapped traffic best I guess.

“We need a little more work on our car to get it a little more balanced. We’ll just work a little harder.”

Sheppard, 24, couldn’t quite keep pace with Madden and Clanton after his short stint at the front of the field early in the A-main.

“I don’t think we were tightened up enough for the circumstances,” said Sheppard, who registered his 30th top-five finish in 36 WoO starts this season. “We kind of expected the track to stay wet a little bit longer than it did. We got the lead there at the beginning, but once the bottom went away we just got a little too loose.”

Notes: Madden’s 14th career WoO triumph tied him with Tim Fuller of Watertown, N.Y. — a two-time winner at Merritt — for 11th on the circuit’s all-time win list. … The non-stop A-main was completed in just 18 minutes, 48.708 seconds after taking the green flag just after 8:40 p.m. ... Brandon Thirlby of Traverse City, Mich., was the highest-finishing home-state driver, placing sixth after starting 11th. He earned the $500 WoO Bonus Bucks cash for being the first competitor across the finish line who isn’t a WoO regular and has never won a WoO A-main. … Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, experienced heat-race trouble for the second consecutive night, spinning midway through the third prelim. He rallied to transfer but could only manage a 12th-place finish in the feature, dropping him into a tie for fifth in the WoO points standings with Eckert. … Bagley ran in the top five for more than two-thirds of the feature before slipping to eighth in the final rundown. … Hot laps were scheduled to start at 5 p.m., but cars were held back at that time and the program put in a temporary "holding pattern" due to light rain moving through the area. The precipitation stopped and practice began shortly before 6 p.m.; showers threatened the remainder of the night but stayed just away from the track. … The $15,000 first-place prize was a record Dirt Late Model payoff for the northern Michigan track. Last year's inaugural Great Lakes Shootout was slated to offer $15,000 to win, but the race was ultimately shortened to 50 laps and paid $10,000 to win after it was postponed one day by rain.