Tim McCreadie tried being stoic Thursday. He didn’t want to think about the emotions that come with May 15. A year ago on that day, the 51-year-old lost his legendary father, “Barefoot” Bob McCreadie.

But one year later at Raceway 7 in Conneaut, Ohio, the former World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series champion put himself and his No. 9 tribute machine to his late father back in national touring victory lane. The weight of the moment was certainly hard for the 51-year-old veteran of Watertown, N.Y., to put into words.

“It’s hard to deal with," a choked up McCreadie said of leading all 35 laps to score a $12,000 win in Thursday’s Great Lake Showdown on the one-year anniversary of his father Bob's death. “When you got great people around you, like Boom (Briggs), their whole family, my mom, my brother, sister, everybody ... it’s been a tough day.”

“I’ve been holding it in all day, trying not to think about (losing his father). It’s been a rough go for us, but we’ll keep plugging along, that’s all we can do.”

McCreadie, who had to step away twice from the cameras and DIRTVision pit reporter Ashton Smyth to gather himself and his emotions to articulate those sentiments, put to rest a four-year winless drought on the WoO circuit.

His last win on the tour came April 2021 at Richmond (Ky.) Raceway. It also snapped a 45-race winless streak that spanned back Aug. 17’s one and only win with Rocket1 Racing at Batesville Motor Speedway’s Topless 100 in Locust Grove, Ark.

Fortunately for McCreadie, his 34th career WoO triumph came without any close calls or dramatics. He beat Ashton Winger to the line by 2.618 seconds in the non-stop feature in which the nation’s No. 1 driver Bobby Pierce never challenged for the win in his fourth-to-fifth performance.

McCreadie’s race-winning move came when he cleared the pole-starting Winger from the outside front row on a turn-three slide job on the opening lap. From there, his experience at Raceway 7 carried him. In four Late Model starts at the 7/16-mile track, he has two wins and has finished no worse than fourth.

McCreadie figures that kind of success at Raceway 7 is a byproduct of his knack for smooth, methodical driving.

“Maybe the way the style is, keeping the car straight and not spinning so much kind of lends itself to what I like to do,” McCreadie told WoO PR director Spence Smithback. “When I was younger I liked to spin the tires a lot, now that I’ve gotten older, I like to keep the car underneath me.”

Another benefit for McCreadie on Thursday was that Raceway 7 is roughly an hour from car owner’s Boom Briggs’ home in Bear Lake, Pa. A little backyard knowledge didn’t hurt.

“(Boom) told me where to be in qualifying, he ran over and told me where he thought I needed to be and it was good,” said McCreadie, who has three top-fives and five top-10s over his last six races. “He’s just positive. Since driving with him, the whole deal, it’s been amazing. He keeps me focused, and with everything going on today, he was just there for me.”