LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — Lawrenceburg Speedway has long held the role of distinguishing the start of the big picture in the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship season and will do so again at the Midwest opener on Saturday, April 2.
Florida’s Bubba Raceway in Ocala has already served as the official grand opening to the championship season, with three rounds of racing taking place back in February. Still, it’s the early April opener that represents the start of the season grind, when the pace of the schedule begins to quicken and race days become as frequent as eating and breathing.
Lawrenceburg Speedway has hosted an annual spring date in April since the 2006 season, and will continue the custom on Saturday at the three-eighths-mile dirt oval.
In past years, the traditional early season dates have taken the series to Pennsylvania’s Reading Fairgrounds, beginning with USAC’s inaugural campaign in 1956 and going up until the venue’s closure in the late 1970s.
USAC’s tradition at Lawrenceburg has few comparisons and the track has annually hosted National Sprint Car events for 30 consecutive seasons, since 1992. Lawrenceburg holds the second longest active streak behind the Terre Haute (Ind.) Action Track, which has held series events every year since 1990.
There have been 10 races and 10 different winners who have emerged within the time that Lawrenceburg has greeted USAC with an April date: Jon Stanbrough (2006), Levi Jones (2007), Josh Wise (2009), Jerry Coons Jr. (2010), Kevin Thomas Jr. (2013), Justin Grant (2014), Logan Jarrett (2015), Dave Darland (2016), Chris Windom (2017) and Brady Bacon (2021).
Bacon enters Saturday’s race as the defending April winner and hopes to go back-to-back and become the first driver to duplicate his 2021 victory. After all, he’s the most recent driver to capture consecutive USAC Sprint Car wins at the track, taking the 2020 closer and the 2021 lid-lifter.
Same goes for Justin Grant who won at Ocala in February and is currently tied for fourth place in all-time USAC Sprint Car wins at Lawrenceburg with four victories to his name.
Grant’s first series win came at Lawrenceburg in 2012. His second came in April of 2014 when he took advantage of a late-race restart, then used the extreme upper reaches of the surface to shoot to the lead.
Stanbrough captured the first April round at Lawrenceburg in 2006, scoring a thrilling last-lap triumph when he passed Bud Kaeding on the 30th and final lap, after starting all the way back in the 14th starting spot.
The next year saw virtually the same type of finish when Levi Jones grabbed one of the closest photo finishes in series history as he came from behind to beat Bacon by less than ten-thousands of a second.
Josh Wise got the best of Jones in the follow-up edition in April of 2009, passing him with eight laps to go in what was the 2006 series champion’s last series victory. Jerry Coons Jr. displayed his dominance in the April 2010 event, leading all 30 laps in the No. 69.
The late-race heroics returned in 2013 when Kevin Thomas Jr. waited until the last lap to steal victory after starting 10th, coming on late to make a spirited charge on the high side to pull past Chase Stockon off turn two. Thomas narrowly held him off to pick up the win.
It’s a rare feat to pull both an absolute upset and absolute domination in one fell swoop, but Logan Jarrett did just that at Lawrenceburg in 2015 when he jumped to the lead at the green and laid a beatdown on the field to win his first and only USAC National Sprint Car feature.
In what became a contest of survival of the fittest under a barrage of flurries before the checkered, Dave Darland was the last man standing, making his equipment endure to the finish line in 2016 to extend his all-time USAC National Sprint Car record at Lawrenceburg to seven wins.
In April of 2017, Chris Windom shed the label of perennial Lawrenceburg runner-up by leading all 30 laps on his way to his first USAC victory at the track and to his first USAC National Sprint Car driving championship.
Two-time Lawrenceburg USAC Sprint winner C.J. Leary, as well as one-time winners Robert Ballou, Logan Seavey and Chase Stockon, are among the active talent vying for a first career series win at the track.
Seavey has never before started the April feature at Lawrenceburg, and the same goes for series point leader Emerson Axsom, who’s won two of the first three races of the 2022 USAC season and leads the standings entering Saturday’s race.
The next installment of springtime USAC racing at Lawrenceburg will be the 68th points race and the 69th overall in series history at the southeastern Indiana venue. USAC and Lawrenceburg Speedway officials have made the decision to move the event schedule up by two hours to prioritize the comfort of fans and teams due to the forecasted chilly temperatures.
Keyword: USAC Sprint Car Season Resumes At Lawrenceburg