MARYVILLE, Tenn. — Mike Marlar was happy that he had a second chance to pass Ricky Weiss. It’s not that he was necessarily glad to see the Headingley, Manitoba, driver go back by him with 10 laps remaining in Saturday’s 60-lap World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series main event at Smoky Mountain Speedway after Marlar had wrestled the lead away 22 laps earlier.

But Marlar admittedly said he roughed Weiss up a bit when he took the lead the first time and was eager for a second opportunity to make a better maneuver. With fewer than five laps remaining, the Winfield, Tenn., driver got his chance.

Regaining the lead from Weiss with three laps left, Marlar picked up a $12,000 victory in the annual Tennessee Tipoff. Marlar led laps 28-49 before losing the lead to Weiss in traffic, but three laps after a lap-55 restart, Marlar fired a race-winning slider entering turn three and led the final three circuits for his eighth career WoO victory.

Weiss, who started eighth, held on for second, finishing 1.075 seconds behind after leading twice for a total of 11 laps. Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va., Friday’s series winner at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn., finished third, while polesitter Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., was fourth. Donald McIntosh of Dawsonville, Ga., improved seven positions after starting 12th and completed the top five.

“Being out front here is big, but I really didn’t pass (Weiss the first time) the way I wanted to pass him,” Marlar said. “He was floating out off of (turn) four and I crossed him over and went down the front straightaway and he had been going (into the turn) … I knew he was gonna run the bottom, but he had been kinda running maybe like a lane and a half off (entering the turn) and coming back to it on exit.

“When I crossed him over on the front straightaway I thought, ‘Well I can squirt by him getting in the corner here and that’s gonna take the air off his nose and make him push a little bit and I’ll be fine and it’s gonna hurt my exit, but it’s gonna hurt his too and I’l get off the corner and I think I’ll have the lead.’

“For whatever reason when I crossed him over down the front straightaway and I cut back to the left … you know, I come diagonal down the front straightaway … when I went to straighten up a little bit to get into the corner, it’s like I sat down on the left rear and flat slid a little bit and I went in there and hit him. So I felt terrible about that.”

Marlar said he didn’t expect Weiss to simply disappear.

“I knew that Ricky was gonna be right on me,” Marlar said. “So he passed me back and I was glad that late in the race I was able to repass him and do it cleanly because, you know, the first time I wasn’t proud of how I passed him. And I told him that after the race, you know, I really felt bad about it. But anyway, I miscalculated it a little bit … you’re going really fast in this place you know.”

Weiss regrouped and eventually ran Marlar down, catching him as they approached slower traffic late in the race.

“When he got by me there, he pulled away a little bit and then we were actually getting better and better the longer the run went and we stayed with him,” Weiss said. “Then we started moving to the bottom and we started gaining and gaining and gaining and then catching all the lapped cars.

“There really was none on the bottom like there was on the top, so we were able to … if I hit my marks, I would gain once I got around them. I figured if I had a real good shot at winning, it was just because the clean position on the race track on the bottom there.”

Clearing the traffic seemed to help Marlar the most. Rolling around the top of the 4/10-mile, high-speed oval, Marlar was digging into Weiss’s lead when the race’s fifth caution waved on lap 54 for the slowing machine of Hampton, Ga.’s Ashton Winger, who had a flat tire.

“Yeah that sucked. I seen it happening down the front straightaway and I knew,” Weiss said. “I was just cussing in the helmet going, ‘Damn I wish (the caution light) didn’t come on, and I said if I win this I was gonna be working for it.”

On the restart, Marlar wasted no time going to work as he charged each corner on the top. He was on Weiss’s right rear quarterpanel when the caution waved on lap 55, slowing the action once again. Marlar said he tried to back out of the throttle as quickly as possible, hoping Weiss didn’t know he was there.

But the Canadian was keen to Marlar’s advances.

“I knew Marlar was good up top. He always is,” Weiss said. “I knew that’s where he would be. And I guess if I could do it again, I guess I would just try to go up there and take his line away. I figured there was a lot of brown off the bottom of (turn) two and if I could nail that right, I would be fine going down the back straightaway. He must’ve gotten a good enough run out of (turn) two just to get the speed down the back straightaway and pinch underneath me.

“Once that caution came out, I knew it was gonna be tough to stay up front. But we tried.”

Weiss took the point from race-long leader Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., on lap 25 when Madden slowed suddenly with power steering problems. Starting outside front row alongside Sheppard, Madden looked to be headed toward his second WoO win of the season when the mechanical gremlins struck. Madden, Weiss and Marlar clearly had the strongest machines, but less than two seconds back was Richards, who closed out the weekend with his second podium finish.

“You know I kinda feel like I shot myself in the foot in the heat race,” Richards said. “I tried to roll around the bottom of (turns) one and two and Darrell (Lanigan) got a jump on me and I tried to stay low. I should’ve probably got to the top quicker and blended in and run second. Instead we ran third (in the heat) and it put us behind.

“This place is so hard to like catch someone and pass them, usually you pass on restarts unless you get bottled up because once you get that momentum built, the air is so big your just trying to stay in clean air. We weren’t bad. If I hit it right I could be a little bit quicker than (Marlar and Weiss), but for the most part we were a third-place car.”

Notes: Mike Marlar’s previous World of Outlaws victory came on Aug. 18, 2018 at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway. … Twenty-one of the 28 starters finished with 19 completing 60 laps. … Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., last year’s Tennessee Tipoff winner, rallied from 13th to eighth. … Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., a 2018 WoO winner at Smoky Mountain, finished seventh after starting 22nd. … Mason Zeigler of Chalk Hill, Pa., was slated to start 18th, but was sent to the rear when he failed to report to the required lineup area within the 10-minute deadline. Zeigler pitted for fresh tires early and rallied to a sixth-place finish. … Polesitter Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., slipped to second on the initial start and never challenged for the lead in finishing fourth. … Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky., Pearson Williams of Dublin, Ga., and Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., were among frontrunners who dropped out early. … Cory Hedgecock of Loudon, Tenn., won the Limited Late Model feature.