SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Although his left foot was shattered, battered and tattered for the second half of the 2025 USAC national season, Justin Grant managed to pull through it all to earn the Mike Curb USAC National Drivers Championship for the fifth time in his career.
The Ione, California, native collected $15,000 after earning a total of 4,982 points across USAC’s three national divisions in 2025 (Silver Crown, AMSOIL National Sprint & NOS Energy Drink National Midget). In doing so, he became the first five-time titlist of the Mike Curb USAC National Drivers Championship (2017-2021-2022-2023-2025).
“It’s really cool to have done it five times now,” Grant exclaimed. “I’ve been running races for a long time now, and I’m really fortunate to have some success year after year and come up with a few of these. It’s definitely one to keep an eye on throughout the year and one you want to win. When you’re doing all three series, you want to be the guy who does it the best, if you can. It also carries Mike Curb’s name, who’s been such an influence and supporter of our sport, and that makes it special as well.”
Despite leading all drivers with 16 USAC national victories during the 2025 campaign (11 Sprint, 3 Midget & 2 Silver Crown), this one was easily the most challenging Curb title Grant has endured. In late July during the USAC Indiana Sprint Week round at Lawrenceburg Speedway, Grant suffered a broken left foot in a crash that sidelined him for the next four races and put the balance of his season in jeopardy.
“When I broke my foot, I was potentially going to miss some races, and I wanted to know how many I could stand to miss and still be able to maintain my (Curb) lead,” Grant inquired. “I ended up not missing as many races as I thought we might.”
But Grant soon bounced back, and by the second week of August, he was back in the seat of a racecar and running up front, accumulating four more USAC National Sprint Car wins after the injury.
“Every season is challenging in some way at some point, it seems like,” Grant acknowledged. “You have some hurdles to overcome whether it’s performance or management or funding. This year, it just happened to be my foot. There’s always a little bit of something going on, but this one was a little different.”
In the 13 days between the crash and the next USAC race, Grant’s foot had three screws installed to heal his five broken metatarsals and torn ligaments.
In the meantime, his Silver Crown crew chief, Dennis LaCava, was busy constructing a piece of metal that resembled a dolly at first inspection. The piece clamped around Grant’s cast and featured a plate on the bottom that could meet up to the pedal. The overarching goal was to alleviate the load off the front half of his foot, thus allowing him to use his ankle and shin to apply the brakes.
“Fortunately, I had a good surgeon who was really supportive of me getting back in the car and I have a lot of good people around me, including Dennis, who really made a lot of it happen for me. All my teams stepped up and filled some of the roles I would normally fill, like my wife, Ashley, and a ton of people who took the load off me, so I could continue to race. Normally, I’m pretty hands on and involved with things, but this year, I really wasn’t able to do that after the injury. I had a bit to overcome, but it was able to be overcome because I have a lot of really good people around me.”
Across the three USAC national divisions in 2025, Grant won his second career Silver Crown title, finished as the runner-up in Midget points and fifth in the Sprint standings. Interestingly, Grant described the distinct differences in the demands each type of car had on him post-injury, and the quest to make each car feel as natural as possible.
“The crown stuff wasn’t so bad, really,” Grant admitted. “We had the brakes rigged up really good to where it got the load off my foot and into my leg. It wasn’t an issue of being able to push on the brake pedal. The crown races are long and physical. I was fresh out of surgery and still healing when I returned. My energy level was a struggle. Just having the stamina to run 100 laps well and remain focused in the heat of the summer, that was the hard part.”
The sprint car, however, proved to be a demanding in its own unique way.
“The sprint car was easy enough to drive, but it jostles and bangs and beats you up so much,” Grant explained. “It would really jostle my foot around and it would get to being pretty sore, especially when you’re running night after night after night, which added up and really took its toll. But the sprint car has enough motor to where you can run in and stand on the brakes and motor through it. You just have to run more throttle pedal and motor through the brake pedal.”
The midget had its own distinct nuances as well.
“You’re doing lighter movements with your foot in a midget,” Grant described. “You’re using a little bit of brake and you’re squeezing a little bit of brake, and it was hard to modulate those small pedal movements. I was really good at being able to run on down there and stand on the brakes. Like a crown car, you slow down and come off it, so that wasn’t too bad. You have to have a little bit of finesse on the brake pedal.”
Across the board, Grant possesses championship teams in Hemelgarn Racing (Silver Crown), TOPP Motorsports (Sprint Car) and CB Industries (Midget). That made the process of wedging his broken foot into the cockpit of a racecar as seamless as it could possibly be.
“Part of the issue was that my ankle couldn’t move,” Grant noted. “With the way you normally use the brake pedal, your foot comes off the heel riser and shoves forward, but the front of your foot and ankle has to move to allow that. We were moving the heel riser up and eight of an inch and adding a few more pounds of spring just to get it to where my foot could swing down onto the brake pedal and back to the heel riser in one motion. All that had to be just right for it to work. Fortunately, my teams are all really, really great to work with at making changes to the brake pedals, springs and heel risers and all the things to help make my foot comfortable.”
This year marked the 27th year of the Mike Curb USAC National Drivers Championship. Curb has offered the reward annually since the 1999 USAC season to honor USAC’s top overall points champion.
