LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — For Justin Grant, Lawrenceburg Speedway is akin to a second home.
For it was the track where Grant earned his first USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car victory and his lone previous Indiana Sprint Week win seven years earlier. It’s the place in which he won with USAC in 2014 and again in the fall of 2018.
And it’s where he earned his latest triumph, Sunday in round four of NOS Energy Drink Indiana Sprint Week.
“I’ve had a lot of special wins here at Lawrenceburg,” Grant said. “I really like it. I raced down here a ton back when I was driving the 40 car for Mark Hery. It was our Saturday night venue. We raced 10-15 Saturday nights a year here for a few years. It’s just a place I’ve always loved coming to.”
In fact, coming into Sunday’s event, Grant had led just two laps in his entire ISW career, both of which came at the conclusion of that 2012 ISW race at the very same track.
Grant left no doubt on this night, leading all 30 laps from start to finish to win his 15th career USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car feature.
What had been a flurry of five victories in an eight-race span for Grant and TOPP Motorsports to close out the 2018 season, started off strong with a win in their second start of 2019. The wait for a return trip to victory lane took five months, but Grant feels the pieces to the puzzle were always there, the pieces just had to fit together.
“It’s been awhile,” Grant acknowledged. “I felt like we’ve had speed here and there early in the night, then we’ve had speed late in the night and just struggled to put a whole night together. We were finally good early and late and we’re able to put all the pieces together. Lawrenceburg was pretty hammer down tonight and the car was screaming around there. It was a lot of fun to drive and I was just kind of hanging on to it trying to keep it out of the fence.”
Grant won by a comfortable 1.63-second margin over Chris Windom, C.J. Leary, Kevin Thomas Jr. and Carson Short.
To see full results, turn to the next page.