SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Justin Grant may have turned in the most dominant performance in the six-decade history of the Bettenhausen 100 Saturday at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.
Grant delivered his second career triumph at the Springfield Mile aboard his Hemelgarn Racing/NOS Energy Drink – Super Fitness – Hemelgarn Enterprises/DRC/Speedway Chevy in the 61st running of the Bettenhausen 100 Presented By Hunt Brothers Pizza.
Grant executed a complete sweep of the festivities, timing in as the quickest overall in Dirt Draft Practice before promptly going out and laying down the fastest lap in Honest Abe Roofing Qualifying. To close out the day, he became the first driver to lead all 100 miles of the Bettenhausen 100 since Kody Swanson a decade ago in 2014.
To kick off the day, Grant tied the record for most pole positions at the Bettenhausen 100 dating back to its inaugural running in 1961. Grant’s third pole position in the event tied him with him Greg Weld, Jerry Coons Jr. and Kody Swanson for number one all-time.
As the checkered flag flew, Grant etched his name in the books as the 13th driver to capture multiple Bettenhausen 100 victories, joining Chuck Gurney, A.J. Foyt, Jack Hewitt, Brian Tyler, Mario Andretti, Dave Darland, Kody Swanson, Al Unser, Gary Bettenhausen, A.J. Fike, Jim Hurtubise and Bobby Olivero.
Grant’s victory arrived at Springfield on the heels of a second-place finish just about 15 hours earlier on the pavement of World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill., which has closed the gap to 21 between him and point leader Kody Swanson in the pursuit of a USAC Silver Crown championship.
“We won the Du Quoin race at the end of last year, and then to come here and win at the Springfield Mile, it feels really good,” Grant exclaimed. “We’ve been coming alive here of late, but it’s been good all year. We’ve been racking them up here lately and it feels really rewarding. We kind of lost some speed for a year or two but we’ve worked really hard to get it back, and (team owner) Ron Hemelgarn has given us all the resources we need, and (crew chief) Dennis (LaCava) worked really, really hard to get us back here.”
Furthermore, Grant also tied an all-time record by record notching feature wins in all three USAC national divisions in 2024: Silver Crown, AMSOIL Sprint and NOS Energy Drink Midget. This year marks the sixth time he’s achieved the feat in his career, tying Dave Steele for No. 1 on the list. It’s also the fourth straight year Grant has won races in all three series, one shy of Steele’s record run of five consecutive seasons between 2001-2005.
Grant’s Springfield score was the sixth win of his USAC Silver Crown career.
As far as the race itself, it was, for all intents and purposes, an immaculate run for Grant that was perfectly clean, neat and tidy, free from any flaws, mistakes or mishaps. The same fate didn’t present itself to his challengers among the 40 cars that were on hand. On the third lap, Korey Weyant and Steve Gennetten touched wheels in turn three as the two jockeyed for the 18th position.
As a result, both drivers careened into the outside wall with Gennetten flipping over.
The major mover throughout the first half of the 100-miler was Shane Cockrum. Despite qualifying 15th, he was relegated to the Elliott’s Custom Trailers & Carts Qualifying Race due to missing his spot in qualifying by three or more positions. After winning the qualifying race, the 2022 Bettenhausen 100 winner started 25th and had worked his way up to seventh by lap 49.
Shane Cottle had run a close second to Grant for the first 61 miles before trouble befell him on lap 62. That’s when his car went up in smoke, ending his bid for a first career Bettenhausen 100 after finishing as the runner-up in each of the two most recent editions in 2022-2023. Cottle’s exodus moved Swanson up to the second position in the running order with 39 laps remaining.
Just five laps later, with Cockrum running sixth, his monster run also went up in a blaze of smoke on the 67th lap, knocking him out the race as the yellow flag flew for his slowly coasting machine. Despite his early exit, Cockrum was rewarded for his +19 efforts with the Inferno Armor Move of the Day. It seemed fitting for Cockrum, whose full-time job is his role as the fire chief of the city of Benton, Illinois.
In the waning laps, all Grant had to do was maintain his pace and successfully navigate his way around a bit of lapped traffic. His one second lead briefly dissipated on lap 88 as he worked his way past the 19th and 18th place cars of Dave Berkheimer and Chris Fetter, respectively, on the back straight. That allowed Swanson to close to within three car lengths of Grant for the top spot. Yet, it only proved to be momentary, as Grant cleared the pair and subsequently reclaimed his interval and then some to the tune of nearly three seconds.
“We had an amazing car,” Grant proclaimed. “The thing was an absolute rocket ship, and I could carry so much speed through the center of the corner and not slip the tires at all. I kept trying to slow my lap times down a little bit and the only way I could do it was just to crawl through the center of the corner, and I didn’t feel like it was using any tire to go this fast. We still had a bunch of tire left.”
When Grant triumphantly flashed across the finish line for the 100th and final time, he was 3.835 seconds to the good, prevailing over Kody Swanson with Logan Seavey, Jerry Coons Jr. and Brady Bacon rounding out the top-five.
“It feels really good to come out of here with a win,” a relieved Grant stated. “To beat Kody, he’s awfully good at this stuff. He’s one of my best friends in the whole world, but we go out and race each other tooth and nail and have a good time.”
The top-three in the current USAC Silver Crown standings just so happened to finish one-two-three at Springfield. The point leader, Kody Swanson, maintained his 21-point advantage over Grant.
“We just had to be faster,” Swanson stated. “You never know when you’re catching them. It could be just because he’s letting you. But I’m really proud of this Doran-Binks Racing team. To continue to try to get better on the dirt is something I’ve been struggling with. But the effort has been there. I’m really thankful to have a good run, but I still want to win. We had a great run, had a great car, but Justin did a good job, and he put it on us there.”
Seavey has become accustomed to finishing on the podium at Springfield. On Saturday, he registered his fourth consecutive top-three finish in the event.
“When you start 10th like that, you have to get them early,” Seavey explained. “When everyone is trying to figure out what pace you can run, you’ve really got to go by quickly. Once they figure the pace, it’s so much harder to pass them and you have to run even harder to pass them. I got there to sixth pretty quickly and then I had to run really hard there to go by Brady (Bacon) and Jerry (Coons Jr.) and I could feel pretty quickly that I blistered it just making those two passes. I just did what I had to do to get up there and used my stuff up as much I could just to get there. I feel like that’s what hurt us there toward the end and allowed those guys to get away. (Crew chief) Ronnie Gardner did a great job with the race car. We just started a little bit too far back.”
USAC Silver Crown National Championship, Illinois State Fairgrounds, Springfield, Ill., Aug. 17, 2024
HONEST ABE ROOFING QUALIFYING: (Top-24 locked into the feature) 1. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn-31.641; 2. Kody Swanson, 77, Doran/Binks-31.974; 3. Trey Osborne, 81, BCR-32.081; 4. Shane Cottle, 121, Swanson-32.177; 5. Brady Bacon, 9, Dyson-32.409; 6. Jerry Coons Jr., 55, Bateman-32.693; 7. Kyle Steffens, 08, Steffens-32.765; 8. Matt Westfall, 54, Westfall-32.880; 9. Kaylee Bryson, 26, Pierce-32.911; 10. Logan Seavey, 22, Rice/Abacus-33.010; 11. Carmen Perigo, 52, Stehman-33.026; 12. Chase Stockon, 69, Pink 69-33.055; 13. Chris Urish, 177, Urish-33.066; 14. Saban Bibent, 88, Fetter-33.144; 15. Shane Cockrum, 97, Lein-33.224; 16. Mitchel Moles, 119, Reinbold/Underwood-33.227; 17. Steve Gennetten, 03, Gennetten-33.313; 18. Jimmy Light, 118, Wingo-33.358; 19. Daison Pursley, 21, Team AZ-33.385; 20. Korey Weyant, 99, Weyant-33.597; 21. Russ Gamester, 51, Gamester-33.780; 22. Chris Fetter, 15, Fetter-33.783; 23. Matt Goodnight, 24, Haggenbottom-34.123; 24. Nathan Moore, 48, Thomas/Moore-34.185; 25. Tom Savage, 38, Savage-34.361; 26. Ken Schrader, 14, McQuinn-34.370; 27. Trey Burke, 07, Tosti-34.412; 28. Danny Jennings, 61, Grace-34.457; 29. Dave Berkheimer, 31, Berkheimer-35.357; 30. Dave Peperak, 777, Peperak-35.373; 31. Aric Gentry, 3, Simmons-35.789; 32. Danny Long, 44, Long-35.874; 33. Briggs Danner, 10, DMW-51.208; 34. C.J. Leary, 6, Klatt-NT; 35. Kip Hughes, 160, Hughes-NT; 36. Mario Clouser, 60, Legacy/Wilson-NT; 37. Patrick Lawson, 2, Lawson-NT; 38. Bryan Gossel, 06, Gossel-NT; 39. Joey Moughan, 29, MSP-NT; 40. Gregg Cory, 32, Williams/Cory-NT.
ELLIOTT’S CUSTOM TRAILERS & CARTS QUALIFYING RACE: (12 laps, top-6 transfer to the feature) 1. Shane Cockrum, 2. Briggs Danner, 3. Trey Burke, 4. Danny Jennings, 5. Dave Berkheimer, 6. Ken Schrader, 7. Aric Gentry, 8. Dave Peperak, 9. Danny Long, 10. Kip Hughes, 11. Gregg Cory. 6:47.513
FEATURE: (100 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Justin Grant (1), 2. Kody Swanson (2), 3. Logan Seavey (10), 4. Jerry Coons Jr. (6), 5. Brady Bacon (5), 6. Carmen Perigo (11), 7. Matt Westfall (8), 8. Kyle Steffens (7), 9. Daison Pursley (28), 10. Chase Stockon (12), 11. Russ Gamester (19), 12. Danny Jennings (30), 13. Matt Goodnight (21), 14. Briggs Danner (25), 15. Trey Osborne (3), 16. Kaylee Bryson (9), 17. Jimmy Light (17), 18. Chris Fetter (20), 19. Dave Berkheimer (27), 20. Saban Bibent (14), 21. Shane Cockrum (24), 22. Shane Cottle (4), 23. Mitchel Moles (15), 24. Nathan Moore (22), 25. Tom Savage (23), 26. Steve Gennetten (16), 27. Korey Weyant (18), 28. Trey Burke (26), 29. Chris Urish (13), 30. C.J. Leary (29-P), 31. Mario Clouser (#14) (31).