SPEEDWAY, Ind. — For the second consecutive season, no driver passed more cars throughout the USAC national season than Daison Pursley en route to the USAC ProSource Passing Master title.
Pursley advanced 209 positions in 72 features across USAC’s Silver Crown, AMSOIL National Sprint Car and NOS Energy Drink National Midget divisions throughout the 2024 campaign, which earned him a $2,500 reward
He becomes the second back-to-back winner of the season-long Passing Master award, which rewards the USAC nationally licensed driver who advanced the most positions during feature events throughout the entirety of USAC’s 2024 national season between Silver Crown, Sprint Cars and Midgets. Justin Grant also won the award consecutively in 2021 and 2022.
Early on in the season, both of Pursley’s USAC car owners, Chad Boat (Midget) and Michael Burkhart (Sprint & Silver Crown), made a prediction that Pursley wouldn’t repeat the award in 2024. Not because they doubted him, but because Pursley was expected to be a front runner in qualifying, which would set him up with a quality starting spot come feature time. Instead, Pursley was able to accomplish both.
“At the beginning of the year, both Chad and Michael told me, ‘you aren’t going to win passing master this year.’” Pursley recalled. “We want to qualify well and start up front, but I was like, ‘if I qualify that good, I’d still start in the third row and would still have a chance at passing a lot of cars.’”
That he did, passing 10 more cars than he did a year ago during his first passing master crown in addition to capturing the 2024 USAC National Midget driving championship.
“Usually, if you win passing master, it means you started pretty far back, which also means you didn’t qualify well,” Pursley explained. “But I thought I did a good job this year at upping my qualifying game. I felt that had been one of my weakest points. There’s times we started 15th or 18th or 20th on back, but we were still able to finish inside the top-three. That allowed us to have a big jump in the passing master points, and that’s what helps make those championship runs when you can start that far back and still get a good result.”
Pursley’s standout passing performance of the 2024 USAC season came during May’s Larry Rice Classic for sprint cars at Indiana’s Bloomington Speedway where he started 23rd on the grid before passing 21 cars, cutting right through the middle of the quarter-mile of red clay to finish second. The performance set an all-time USAC National Sprint Car record for the biggest advancement by a driver from start to finish in the series’ 68-year history.
“Bloomington’s small and sprint cars are tight at that place to begin with,” Pursley noted. “There were a couple of people who made jokes to me, like ‘how do you go from 23rd to second and not win the race if the car was that good?’ That’s exactly how I felt too. Everything went perfect, but when we got to second, it was like, ‘what the heck? Why can’t I get to the lead?’ Nonetheless, it was a special night. It felt like they were sitting still and my car was just hitting on all cylinders.”
Pursley was one of three drivers to win in all three of USAC’s national divisions in 2024, racking up 10 wins across the board in Midgets (7), Sprints (2) and Silver Crown (1).
“I find a lot of enjoyment in passing cars and creating different lines and developing stuff,” Pursley explained. “It’s something I felt like I’ve worked on a lot in my career, maneuvering past cars whether that’s in lapped traffic or whether I have to start in the back on a restart or anything like that. I felt like I’ve done a pretty dang good job and studied to get better in some areas. It’s something I enjoy, and I can make up a lot of time on restarts and by passing those cars in the slowest parts of the racetrack, and that’s what I was able to accomplish this year.”
