2012 TM Lights @ Las Vegas

The first race of the 2012 TM Lights season was held at the Las Vegas Autoring in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Summary
Eleventh-hour entrant Eric Molina took out the pole. The entire field of 38 was within one-tenth of a second of the pole. Tyrone Stanley drove the No. 51 car in this race as Mike Andrews was running the ARLA race in Talladega, which occurred only a few hours before this race started. Andrews will drive the No. 51 in as many races as his schedule allows. Or, in other words, every other race this season.

The race was really just a big revolving superspeedway shuffle, meaning, pretty damn boring until the last three laps. Interestingly enough, another one of the 11th-hour entrants, the No. 29 car driven by James Davison, appeared to be the car to beat along with the unsponsored EV Racing car driven by Jacob Kard.

Roger Kendall's race was screwed before it began, as he had to pit on the pace lap due to a puncture. He returned to the race three laps down. He ended up finishing last after losing another lap.

Early in the race, Troy Adams had a tire going down and pitted, losing four laps. He was at least able to race with Kendall and both were at the same speed as the leaders.

The first caution came out on lap 33 for Nasu Tsunemochi stalling on-track right as everyone was going to make green flag pit stops. Jim Hayes, notably, went to pit from the outside lane, doorchecking Zach Gott in the process. Hayes pulled away, and then pulled hard into Gott's door again, prompting officials to call him to the hauler after that hilarious display of petulance. Everyone but Tsunemochi stayed on the lead lap.

Tiffany Matthews led on the restart but immediately hit the pitlane with a flat left rear tire. Tough break for the Matthews Motorsports bunch.

Sakura Motoko dropped back through the field and lost the draft. There was no indication as to why.

Lap 68 of 80 saw the second caution, caused by Brian Morris coming into the pitlane, and Davison cutting him off and spinning the No. 14 car around. Morris continued on. Behind Morris, Bernhard Strauss slowed to enter the pitlane and was whacked from behind by Archer Harris, sending the No. 7 car for a harmless spin.

Under that yellow, Gott slammed into the back of...Hayes. Neither the fans nor the officials understood this maneuver, which also got Kendall caught up as he ran into the back of Hayes. Gott and Kendall earned trips to the Stewards' Office as well.

At this point, there were 32 cars on the lead lap. Afzal Tahmid, Nathan Ferguson, and Tsunemochi were one lap down, Matthews was down two, and of course, Adams and Kendall were down four.

The restart was with less than 10 laps to go, and only Motoko and Hayes were really off the pace. Meaning, of course, that the lapped cars were fast...and therefore getting in the way a bit. Dermid Scott, Brandon Lareau, Stanley, Strauss, Thomas Kade, Andrea Kinasa, and Davison all made legitimate challenges for the win, but it was Morris who took the win by less than a tenth of a second over Mark Blackwell and Axel Andersson. All 38 cars finished the race.

After the race, the Hayes shenanigans continued. Hayes must not have appreciated how Quan Xing had raced him at some point, because Hayes slammed into the back of the No. 3 car and cause a really big pileup in the process on the cool-down lap. Both the Lynxe Women's Team cars, both of Leonid Roderick's cars, and...pretty much anyone who didn't finish in the top 20 minus Motoko, Kendall, Adams, Tahmid, and Matthews got damage due to Jim Hayes being a derp.

Results

 * For the complete results, click here.

Morris' victory was the first of his TM Lights career.

Points
Since this was the first race of the season, the points standings mirror the event's finishing order.

Penalties

 * Jim Hayes – Penalized 30 points and suspended from the the next race.