MECHANICSBURG, Pa. — Despite leading all 30 laps of Friday night’s Eastern Storm USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car Series race at Williams Grove Speedway, Justin Grant endured a wild ride en route to victory lane.
Grant banked $6,000 for winning USAC’s return to the half-mile track, which came 66 years to the day of its first appearance there in 1956.
“Sprint car racing is supposed to be gnarly,” Grant said “They’re supposed to be won on the fence. We love big curbs, rough racetracks and, the more exciting it is for the fans, the more we like it and the better it is.”
Gnarly describes Grant’s final two laps.
En route to the white flag and holding a seemingly comfortable two-plus second margin lead as he encountered the turn three cushion, Grant ran up over the curb, nearly tagged the wall and pulled a reverse wheel stand with both rear tires kicking sky high like a bucking bronco, leaving the right front tire as the lone piece of Grant’s car still making contact with the track surface.
Grant dug his way out of it and carried on through turn four and the front straightway, taking the signal for one lap to go from the flag stand. Turns one and two were as smooth as can be as was his final trip beneath the famed landmark bridge that overhangs the back straightaway.
But as Grant tiptoed through turn three on the bottom, he slid up and tagged the cushion in turn four with his right-rear tire. Grant stabbed the gas romped to the checkered flag as smoke began to billow out of the headers of Grant’s ride as he chugged to the finish line just three car lengths ahead of Alex Bright.
For Grant, his long-awaited first series victory since February couldn’t have come at a better time. It was the Ione, California native’s 30th career USAC National Sprint Car feature win, tying him with Chris Windom for 17th on the all-time list.
“I told some of the guys in the pits that I’m setting up to go bang the fence down,” Grant remembered. “I’m not running the bottom; I don’t care. We’re either going to win on the fence or run 20th on the fence.”
Grant was a man of his word and put it on the fence often and early, zipping by outside front row starter Matt Westfall on the opening lap while fourth-starting Logan Seavey made a beeline using the topside to climb to third past Ballou and to second ahead of Westfall by lap three.
Up front, Grant was cruising while holding a three-second lead over Seavey at the midway point until fast-qualifier Jake Swanson slowed to a stop in turn two to bring out the yellow flag, thus bunching up the field.
While Ballou and Brady Bacon tussled for the third position on lap 17, hard-charging Alex Bright slithered under both on the low line in turn two to move into the top-three after starting all the way back in the 13th position. Grant was steady as he goes with a lead of one second over Seavey with Bright another full second behind Seavey.
As Grant steadily increased his lead to 2.2 seconds by lap 25, 20th running Dallas Hewitt spun backwards and came to a rest against the turn four outside guardrail to bring out the final caution.
On the restart with six laps remaining, Bright picked off Seavey for the second position on the bottom of turn two while Grant stood on the throttle on the outside lane, briefly making it three-wide between the top-three with the laps dwindling and the pressure mounting.
Slightly behind Grant, Seavey answered the message and roared back past Bright for second coming to the line with three laps to go. The see-saw tug-of-war went right back into Bright’s hands the very next trip around with two laps left. But, at that moment, Grant had increased his lead to a 1.8 second margin and, seemingly, all was in hand.
But Grant stumbled on the cushion and become airborne between turns three and four as he rumbled to the white flag but hung on and maintained his sizable lead. It was a relatively no harm, no foul situation for Grant despite losing seven tenths of his lead in the blink of an eye, which was now down to 1.1.
One lap later, it happened again for Grant as he tripped over the curb and fell into the fluff that acted more like quicksand as he carved his way out and, mercifully, got to the checkered flag first, just .297 seconds ahead of Bright, Seavey and Bacon with Westfall rounding out the top five.
Bright put on a show as he turned in his best career USAC National Sprint Car feature finish with a second-place result in his Hummer Motorsports/Rodota Trucking & Excavating – DriveWFX.com/Maxim/Rider Chevy at the same venue he captured a USAC East Coast Sprint Car win less than two weeks earlier.
d“Everybody kind of made it easy; they all went to the top,” said. “We were working the bottom where I had to be really aggressive and sometimes had to make the car a little wide. I got fired as a crew chief last night, so we had some new guys, Lou and my brother (Brendan) stepped up tonight, and they did a great job. This car was on rails tonight, but I wish we had a few more laps. The top was starting to get treacherous, and Grant was making mistakes, but he ran a great race and I’m happy to come home second.”
Fresh off his first Eastern Storm victory two nights earlier at New Jersey’s Bridgeport Motorsports Park, Seavey followed it up with a third-place result in his Baldwin-Fox Racing/Fox Paving – AMSOIL/DRC/Claxton Chevy.
“That was really tricky,” Seavey admitted. “You had to slow down so much on entry just to make the corner, then you had a big ol’ curb, so you had to get the tires spinning really quickly again. It’s amazing that Justin even held onto that thing. I thought that maybe my car was a little bit better than his, but he was just running harder than I was. It looked like he was on the verge of crashing every three or four laps, but he came out with the win. I gave up second there on the restart and I thought there was moisture in the middle of one and two, but it was dirty and dusty, but overall, I’m pretty happy with our speed.”
Keyword: Rough-Riding Grant Conquers The Grove