Matt Waltz finally prevails in his home track’s biggest race, wins the Hampton Heat at Langley Speedway

HAMPTON, Va. -- Matt Waltz entered Saturday's Hampton Heat with redemption on his mind after he was disqualified from a second-place run at Virginia's South Boston Speedway in the first leg of the 2025 Virginia Late Model Triple Crown. Mission accomplished -- and he couldn't have picked a better time and place. Waltz, the 2017 Langley Speedway champion, finally won his home track's biggest race when he cruised to a convincing victory in a race that was delayed by four hours due to a passing storm. Waltz was the leader at the halfway break when the storm arrived. He never looked back. "I've been trying to win this thing for a long time, so to come out here after so many years and be able to win this thing, it's awesome," Waltz said. "So fired up. We had such a good race car today."

Waltz won on a day that saw him set the best lap in practice. He then started on the front row, and 95 laps into the race, he found himself pushing Atley Wiese for the lead. Waltz made the pass just in time for the halfway break. He then owned the second half of the race, consistently jumping out to large leads on multiple restarts. Such a gap was important in the closing laps, as a pair of Langley aces in Connor Hall and Brenden "Butterbean" Queen were attempting to run down the leader. Waltz, though, navigated lapped traffic and managed his tires to perfection, leaving himself plenty of space ahead of his challengers as the checkered flag waved. "I tried to just keep the tires on it in the first half the best I could and just keep the track position" he said. "I was doing the rain dance at halftime, but it's all good now."

Waltz is now locked into the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville Speedway, the third and final leg of the Triple Crown set to run in September. Hall also is locked into the Triple Crown finale thanks to his victory at South Boston. At Langley, Hall finished second ahead of Queen in third. The latter made his first Late Model Stock Car start of the year and was coming off a victory at Dover Motor Speedway in the ARCA Menards Series the night before. Woody Howard finished fourth ahead of Kade Brown in fifth. Carson Loftin, Peyton Sellers, Ronnie Bassett Jr., Trevor Ward and Brandon Pierce finished sixth through 10th, respectively.