Jason Bartlett Wins 7 at Yonkers Raceway Sunday Afternoon

Jason Bartlett was in “Seventh Heaven” at Yonkers Raceway on Sunday afternoon, his own brand of March Madness, as he continued his assault on the drivers’ standings at Empire City Casino’s historic half-mile oval with seven wins on the matinee card.

Bartlett’s 129 dash wins are more than double those of runner up Brian Sears with 64 triumphs.

Yonkers Raceway’s “Maine” Man, Bartlett showed his magic touch in the third and fourth races with the favorites, winning by a mere nose and neck in back to back mile and a quarter contests for the French simulcasting hub. In the third, Tober began the Bartlett brigade of victories, winning by a scant nose over TheresADemonInMe, driven by Andy Miller, in 2:27:3.

In the fourth, Zorgwijk Nova got the job done in another close one, scoring over Bingo Queen and Brent Holland in 2:26:2.

Movement was Bartlett’s third winner of the afternoon in yet another 1-¼ mile trot, stopping the clock in 2:29:2 in the sixth race on the card to begin a string of four consecutive races.

Close finishes were the order of the day for Bartlett, scoring in the seventh with the appropriately named hunch of the day with RoethBlissBerger, considering that the Rooney Family of Pittsburgh Steelers fame have been the raceway owners for four decades. Bartlett got his charge up by a neck in the final strides over favored Touch The Rock and George Brennan,stopping the clock in 1:54.

In the eighth, Bartlett continued to pile onto his A-plus grade for the afternoon, bringing home, of course, A Plus Hanover in the shadow of the wire, and stopping the clock in 1:53:3.

Do you believe in Bartlett, yet? You’d better believe that What I Believe and, yes, it was Bartlett again in the ninth race with the favorite, timed in 1:53 for the mile pace.

The coup de grace and last of the Bartlett victories put the cherry on the “Sundae” matinee card, a 7¼-length, sizzling 1:50.4, season’s-fastest local mile with odds on favorite Santa Fe Beachboy ($2.20) in the 12th race finale.

Richard Banca trained all four pacing victories for Bartlett, benefitting from the sulky wizardry. Banca is dismantling the trainers’ colony at Yonkers with 27.2 percent winners, 55 triumphs in 202 starts, and forming a lethal trainer-driver tandem.