MECHANICSBURG, Pa. – Despite a spate of caution flags and four overtime restarts, Daison Pursley led wire to wire to win round three of the AMSOIL USAC iRacing Challenge at the virtual Williams Grove Speedway on Thursday night.
Pursley started from the pole after winning the night’s opening heat race and never looked back, fending off Clauson-Marshall Racing’s Aiden Purdue all the way to notch the $500 victory.
It was Pursley’s second-straight USAC iRacing victory in a row, including last Saturday’s AME Electrical Saturday Night Thunder event at Fairbury (Ill.) American Legion Speedway that paid him $2,020 to win.
“Being able to come up with the win now twice in the last two weeks is really cool,” Pursley said. “I just kept on timing my restarts in different spots all night long to try and keep people guessing. I had to be careful when I would go down in the slick, to not spin my tires, but being able to hug the inside wall a bit on the starts helped me, I think. I just had to keep the lead going into turn one every time.”
Though Pursley never faltered throughout Thursday night’s race, he had to keep Purdue at bay in the final set of corners after Purdue attempted a slide job but couldn’t make the pass stick down low.
That left the 15-year-old Locust Grove, Okla., native free to charge home to the checkered flag.
“It was a good race between Aiden and I there; it was just hard to keep any sort of a rhythm up with all the yellows we had,” Pursley noted. “But going into (turn) three there, I knew we had the run off the corner (to win) and I just had to get through the center (of the corner) well so he couldn’t slide me.”
Purdue hung on to his No. 39bc to come home second, .265 seconds adrift of Pursley. He noted that while his restarts got better and better through the race, he didn’t quite have enough at the finish.
“I needed to key up my starts perfectly to have a chance at the end there, and I had a couple that were pretty bad,” Purdue admitted. “We worked on them and perfected them throughout the night, and got them pretty good, but we just weren’t quite good enough to beat Daison there.”
Reigning USAC Western States Midget Series champion Robert Dalby completed the podium, followed by Austin Yarbrough, who charged from 17th to fourth. Chris Windom filled out the top five.
Australian Kaidon Brown crossed sixth, ahead of Brayden Fox, Ronnie Wuerdeman, Justin Grant and Karter Sarff.
Zeb Wise ran among the top five for most of the night before flipping during the penultimate overtime attempt, ending up five laps down in 16th.
A similar fate befell his real-life Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports teammate Cannon McIntosh, who went upside down from a top-five running position on lap 10 and finished 22nd after starting on the front row.
Among the stars who missed the main event were defending USAC National Midget Series champion Tyler Courtney, two-time USAC National Sprint Car Series champion Brady Bacon, past Turkey Night Grand Prix winner Billy Wease and USAC Triple Crown champion J.J. Yeley, among others.
To view complete race results, advance to the next page.