Everyone knew entering Saturday’s CARS Tour race at the extremely abrasive New River All-American Speedway in Jacksonville, North Carolina that these 125 laps would be a challenge. With a bunch of leaders even before the halfway mark, it was clear that whoever walked away as the winner would definitely have to earn it.

And that’s exactly what Bobby McCarty did on Saturday night. He earned his first victory of the 2024 season in convincing fashion, beating Mini Tyrrell to the checkered flag by 0.486-second after taking the lead with less than 20 laps to go.

“It was just a lot of strategy, man,” said McCarty afterwards. “There was a lot of people moving and just kind of jousting for position. You kind of just don’t know what to do there. I felt like we needed to be with the 03 (Brenden Queen), because he’s been the car to beat here for the longest time. So we put ourselves in position and then him and the 81 (Tyrrell) got to racing really hard, and that set us up to take the lead there. Once we got the lead we just had to maintain our gap.”

Watch: Bobby McCarty Puts CARS Tour Field On Notice With New River Victory

The victory was the 12th of McCarty’s career, which makes him the all-time wins leader in CARS Tour history, breaking a tie with R&S Race Cars teammate Deac McCaskill.

As a result, the three-time champion put the rest of his CARS Tour competitors on notice when everything was all said and done.

“I’m starting to remember what all of this feels like,” McCarty said. “We’ll just keep working and the guys will keep bringing fast race cars. We’re coming for them. They don’t know it yet, but we’re coming.”

Rounding out the rest of the top five behind McCarty was Tyrrell in second place, points leader Connor Hall finished third, Treyten Lapcevich in fourth, and defending champion Carson Kvapil in fifth.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who made his 2024 CARS Tour season debut on Saturday night, finished 14th after getting caught up in a crash with Landon Huffman with just under 50 laps remaining.

The CARS Tour will be back in action in just a few days as they head down to Rougemont, North Carolina's high-banked Orange County Speedway on Saturday, April 20. Fans can watch all of the action live on FloRacing.

CARS Tour At New River Results