June 22, 2025 | By Richie Murray, USAC Media

Grant, Pursley win USAC main events at Port Royal

PORT ROYAL, Pa.—”I love sprint cars on half-miles.”

For Justin Grant, it’s easy to see why he’d say that following Saturday night’s feature victory during round four of USAC #EasternStorm Presented by Levan Machine & Truck Equipment at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway.

After all, 17 of Grant’s USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship main event wins have come on dirt tracks of that particular distance, which ranks as the fifth most by any driver in series history.

Furthermore, the Ione, California racer’s 58th overall USAC National Sprint Car win moved him one step closer to the all-time series record and now stands just three shy of Brady Bacon (61) for second place and four behind all-time leader Dave Darland (62).

But most miraculously, 50 of Grant’s 58 career USAC National Sprint Car triumphs have come in a car owned by TOPP Motorsports. Grant and TOPP’s 50th win together tied Brady Bacon / Hoffman Auto Racing as the winningest driver/entrant combo in series history.

Grant’s fourth win of the USAC National Sprint Car season arrived Saturday in non-stop, caution free fashion after he surpassed racelong leader Briggs Danner for the lead with 12 laps remaining, then had to stave off his relentless attacks down the stretch to become the first multi-time main event winner of Eastern Storm 2025.

In the process, Grant established a new 30-lap USAC track record at Port Royal, completing the distance in a mere 10:53.663 aboard his TOPP Motorsports/NOS Energy Drink – TOPP Industries – LA Poly/Maxim/Kistler Chevy.

Just as he did the year prior when he led the initial 22 laps, outside front row starter Danner established the early pace and thoroughly dominated the first half of the feature. In the meantime, Grant displayed his meddle early in the going as he advanced from fifth to second within the first three circuits all while experiencing the ever changing track conditions.

“Honestly, the track had changed so much,” Grant explained. “Normally you get going on the cushion, so I kind of pick it a part the first few laps and get settled in. But every couple of laps, it was changing and never for the good. It was getting harder every time.”

Despite the early maneuvering, Grant still had much ground to make up as Danner’s lead had ballooned to a full three seconds by the 15th lap. That said, slowly but surefootedly, Grant edged his way back into the fold as Danner combed through the back end of the field, which subsequently sliced Danner’s advantage to under one second.

On the 19th lap, Danner ducked low in turn one to place 14th running Kayla Roell a lap down. But as Danner slid through turns one and two, he drifted up toward the outside guardrail. At that same moment, Grant got an excellent bite through the middle that propelled him past Danner at the exit of two and into the lead with only 12 laps to go.

“Getting by Briggs there, I was just hoping to catch him in lapped traffic, and I knew I could catch myself in the middle off two if I ran a soft slider across there,” Grant recalled. “I was hoping I could get to him with a run off four behind lapped traffic one time and it worked out really good. Other than that, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. But it worked.”

Danner refused to go quietly into the night and remained in lockstep with Grant as the laps dwindled down. With nine to go, Danner returned fire by making another run at Grant and pulled even before slotting back behind, which served notice to Grant which gave proof through the night that he was still right there.

“I kept looking at the flagman like, ‘are you sure? Where’s the white? Let’s finish this thing,’” Grant reflected. “I about crashed a couple times getting into three. One time, real big! I got way biked up and started having to cheat my entrance into three, which doesn’t get you a good run off four. But I was bicycling every other time trying to make speed. It’s tough. You get to leading and it’s like you can’t beat yourselves here, but when you have a guy like Briggs behind you, you know he’s smashing and getting everything he can out of it trying to hunt you down.”

On the final lap, Danner had closed his deficit to Grant down to a single car length. Through turn three, Grant’s left eye was full of Danner who had once again surged even alongside. It all played into Grant’s mindset after his most recent Port Royal start, in a USAC Silver Crown car in June of 2024, which saw him get passed for the win on the final turn of the final lap.

“I wasn’t really surprised to see Briggs coming to the white,” Grant admitted. “I was having flashbacks, I can tell you that. Trying to find that balance of not getting soft and not crashing yourself, especially in three and four, and trying to figure out what to do in one and two, really, it was a tricky and fun to race.”

Ultimately, Grant successfully kept Danner at bay en route to victory by a 0.759 second margin over runner-up Briggs Danner with Eastern Storm point leader Kyle Cummins third, Mitchel Moles fourth and Robert Ballou rounding out the top-five after starting 12th.

For his efforts, Ballou was the recipient of both the Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Night and Rod End Supply Hard Charger honors. All those accolades came after mechanical issues forced him to a backup car that he used to grind his way back into contention via a heat race win and a top-five run in the feature.

Logan Seavey earned his first Honest Abe Roofing Fast Qualifying time with the USAC National Sprint Cars since May at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway. The defending series champion blazed around Port Royal at a time of 18.662 seconds to earn his 17th career USAC National Sprint Car fast qualifying time, tying Kyle Cummins for 29th place all-time.


USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: June 21, 2025 – Port Royal Speedway – Port Royal, Pennsylvania – 1/2-Mile Dirt Track – USAC Eastern Storm Presented by Levan Machine & Truck Equipment

HONEST ABE ROOFING QUALIFYING: 1. Logan Seavey, 57, Abacus-18.662; 2. Justin Grant, 4, TOPP-18.819; 3. Kyle Cummins, 3p, Petty-18.953; 4. Mitchel Moles, 19AZ, Reinbold/Underwood-18.986; 5. Briggs Danner, 39, Hogue-19.099; 6. C.J. Leary, 21AZ, Team AZ/Curb-Agajanian-19.117; 7. Jake Swanson, 5T, Daming Swanson-19.194; 8. Hayden Reinbold, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-19.212; 9. Gunnar Setser, 5G, KO-19.231; 10. Kale Drake, 2B, 2B Racing-19.243; 11. Kevin Thomas Jr., 3R, Rock Steady-19.284; 12. Kayla Roell, 4K, Roell-19.314; 13. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-19.366; 14. Joey Amantea, 88J, JPA-19.663; 15. Steven Drevicki, 19s, DeGre-19.704; 16. Ed Aikin, 7, Aikin-19.809; 17. Dale Schweikart, 78, Schweikart-20.975; 18. Jason Cherry, 67c, Cherry-21.133; 19. Olivia Thayer, 39T, Thayer-21.648; 20. Dirk Rimrott, 27, Rimrott-23.420; 21. Braydon Cromwell, 4x, Boyd-NT; 22. Billy Ney, 83s, Ney-NT.

CAR IQ FIRST HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature) 1. Robert Ballou, 2. Mitchel Moles, 3. Jake Swanson, 4. Kale Drake, 5. Ed Aikin, 6. Logan Seavey, 7. Olivia Thayer, 8. Billy Ney. 2:44.643

K1 RACEGEAR SECOND HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature) 1. Briggs Danner, 2. Justin Grant, 3. Kevin Thomas Jr., 4. Joey Amantea, 5. Hayden Reinbold, 6. Dale Schweikart. 2:47.500

USAC GEAR THIRD HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature) 1. Kyle Cummins, 2. Steven Drevicki, 3. Gunnar Setser, 4. C.J. Leary, 5. Kayla Roell, 6. Jason Cherry, 7. Braydon Cromwell. 2:46.974

FEATURE: (30 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Justin Grant (5), 2. Briggs Danner (2), 3. Kyle Cummins (4), 4. Mitchel Moles (3), 5. Robert Ballou (12), 6. Jake Swanson (7), 7. C.J. Leary (1), 8. Logan Seavey (6), 9. Gunnar Setser (9), 10. Hayden Reinbold (8), 11. Kale Drake (10), 12. Kevin Thomas Jr. (11), 13. Joey Amantea (14), 14. Kayla Roell (13), 15. Steven Drevicki (15), 16. Ed Aikin (16), 17. Dale Schweikart (17), 18. Jason Cherry (18), 19. Olivia Thayer (19), 20. Braydon Cromwell (21), 21. Billy Ney (22), 22. Dirk Rimrott (20). 10:53.663 (New Track Record)

FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-19 Briggs Danner, Laps 20-30 Justin Grant.

USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Kyle Cummins-1320, 2-Justin Grant-1225, 3-Mitchel Moles-1082, 4-Briggs Danner-1030, 5-Logan Seavey-1002, 6-Robert Ballou-988, 7-Jake Swanson-977, 8-Kale Drake-920, 9-Kevin Thomas Jr.-910, 10-C.J. Leary-907.

USAC EASTERN STORM PRESENTED BY LEVAN MACHINE & TRUCK EQUIPMENT POINTS: 1-Kyle Cummins-304, 2-Briggs Danner-298, 3-Justin Grant-292, 4-Mitchel Moles-280, 5-Jake Swanson-243, 6-Robert Ballou-227, 7-Kevin Thomas Jr.-217, 8-Logan Seavey-212, 9-Hayden Reinbold-201, 10-Kale Drake-197.

USAC PARALLAX GROUP NATIONAL PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Kale Drake-135, 2-C.J. Leary-58, 3-Briggs Danner-57, 4-Robert Ballou-57, 5-Gunnar Setser-57, 6-Kyle Cummins-56, 7-Justin Grant-51, 8-Chase Stockon-50, 9-Jacob Denney-35, 10-Kevin Thomas Jr.-34.

USAC EASTERN STORM PARALLAX GROUP PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Briggs Danner-24, 2-Robert Ballou-20, 3-Kyle Cummins-17, 4-Justin Grant-16, 5-Daison Pursley-15, 6-Steven Drevicki-11, 7-Mitchel Moles-10, 8-Gunnar Setser-8, 9-C.J. Leary-8, 10-Olivia Thayer-8.

NEXT USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: June 22, 2025 – Action Track USA – Kutztown, Pennsylvania – 1/5-Mile Dirt Track – USAC Eastern Storm Presented by Levan Machine & Truck Equipment


CONTINGENCY AWARD WINNERS:

Dirt Draft Hot Laps Fastest Driver: Justin Grant (18.835)
Honest Abe Roofing Fast Qualifier: Logan Seavey (18.662)
Car IQ First Heat Winner: Robert Ballou
K1 RaceGear Second Heat Winner: Briggs Danner
USAC Gear Third Heat Winner: Kyle Cummins
Rod End Supply Hard Charger: Robert Ballou (12th to 5th)
Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Night: Robert Ballou


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PURSLEY PERSEVERES TO WIN PORT ROYAL USAC SILVER CROWN SHOW

By: Richie Murray – USAC Media

PORT ROYAL, PA -- From wreckers to checkers. That’s how Daison Pursley’s Saturday night of USAC Silver Crown competition at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway could be succinctly, but accurately, summed up.

After timing in second fastest on his opening qualifying lap, Pursley stuffed his Chris Dyson Racing/Concord American Flagpole – High Performance Lubricants – Macri Concrete/Maxim/Ott Chevy into the turn two outside guardrail.

The damage was fairly extensive and the car subsequently required some diligent work to get the car ready for 50 laps on the 1/2-mile dirt oval for which the team had secured an outside front row starting spot.

When the night was complete, Pursley and the Dyson No. 9 had thoroughly dominated the event, leading all but the first two laps to capture both the driver and team’s first victory of the 2025 USAC Silver Crown season.

Furthermore, Pursley remained undefeated in a USAC Silver Crown car at Port Royal, winning his 2024 debut in dramatic fashion with a last lap, last turn pass of Justin Grant. This time around, Pursley disposed of Grant on lap three and never looked back.

Grant opened the evening with the 12th pole position of his USAC Silver Crown career, which ranks seventh all-time in series history. Grant then carried on to score the accompanying USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship feature held just before the Silver Crown race. Grant was vying to sweep both USAC main events by the time he rolled off for the Silver Crown feature from P1.

Instead, Pursley charged to the inside of Grant off the exit of turn four and nipped Grant at the stripe to lead lap three by a wheel. From there, Pursley’s lead steadily grew to more than a second by lap 10 and then to a full two seconds by lap 20 until 15th running Jimmy Light slowed with a mechanical issue on the back straight, which brought out the night’s first yellow flag.

Another fellow Pennsylvania native, 16th running Dave Berkheimer, spun backwards to a stop in turn two on the 23rd lap, which proved to be the final stoppage of the night, necessitating another restart in short order. Pursley was certainly wary of the looming restarts but was apt to play it cool rather than divert toward a defensive plan that could disrupt his rhythm and bring him nothing else but the blues.

“I didn’t really know where Justin was running and (my spotter) said I had a good lead, so I didn’t want to move around too much, but it’s so easy to go down there and pull a slider on somebody,” Pursley stated. “I figured one was coming eventually if we kept having restarts, but thankfully, we only had two. I feel like I got a pretty good launch off four to distance myself. It felt like the right thing to do was to continue to run where I wanted to run and that’s what felt comfortable to me.”

With the field bunched up momentarily, Pursley went the remainder of the distance clean and green with Grant giving chase and Mitchel Moles hustling under Jake Swanson on the back straight to slot into the top-three on lap 23. Two-time Port Royal Silver Crown winner Logan Seavey followed suit, as he was seemingly shot out of a cannon into fourth by Swanson on lap 29.

Despite all the shuffling within the top-five, none of it touched Pursley, whose lead had developed into a full-straightaway onslaught with less than 10 laps to go. Heavy lapped traffic loomed for Pursley in the waning stages. However, no challenge to his reign at The Speed Palace was forthcoming for Pursley on this night.

“At Port Royal Speedway, you know the top is going to be fast,” Pursley explained. “You want to get up there and hammer those guardrails and that’s what we were able to do. This thing was phenomenal. After the mishap in qualifying, (the crew) got the thing back together after I pushed the issue a little bit too hard. I just needed the track to widen out and I knew we would come to life. Sure enough, that’s what happened.”

Pursley’s commanding lead was top of mind, and it can certainly become risky to continue pushing when a substantial lead is at hand. But for Pursley, taking the foot off the proverbial throat at any point very well could have proven to be detrimental. But a healthy balance between both sides of the equation can be beneficial, and that’s where he stood on the situation as he put his competition in the distance and pounced through traffic.

“As a racecar driver, I feel like if you slow down, you just get out of the rhythm,” Pursley offered. “I was trying to pace myself a little bit to the best of my abilities, but I’m a racecar driver so of course I want to step on the throttle a little bit harder.”

Pursley’s winning margin was 3.541 seconds when all was said and done. Grant, who led the opening two circuits of the race, increased his championship point lead with a runner-up result. Mitchel Moles rolled to third while Logan Seavey took fourth and local Pennsylvania winged sprint car regular Chase Dietz rounded out the top-five.

Pennsylvania's own Carmen Perigo picked off six in a 12th to sixth run in the feature, which netted him Rod End Supply Hard Charger honors. Perigo also earned hard charger accolades at Port Royal during the inaugural 2022 event at Port. In getting there, it was simply a case of Carmen Perigo doing Carmen Perigo things. When most others were running the top and bottom in unison, Perigo was rolling through the middle of no man’s land where nobody else seemingly ran or had success with.

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USAC SILVER CROWN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: June 21, 2025 – Port Royal Speedway – Port Royal, Pennsylvania – 1/2-Mile Dirt Oval – USAC Eastern Blast

HONEST ABE ROOFING QUALIFYING: 1. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn-20.088; 2. Daison Pursley, 9, Dyson-20.218; 3. Jake Swanson, 6, Klatt-20.237; 4. Mitchel Moles, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-20.247; 5. Matt Westfall, 54, 4 Kings-20.315; 6. Logan Seavey, 22, Rice/Abacus-20.387; 7. C.J. Leary, 21, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi-20.429; 8. Chase Dietz, 86, Lee-20.456; 9. Alex Bright, 24, Haggenbottom-20.607; 10. Kyle Steffens, 8, Steffens-20.699; 11. Chase Stockon, 69, Pink 69-20.768; 12. Carmen Perigo, 52, Stehman-20.781; 13. Briggs Danner, 10, DMW-20.838; 14. Kyle Cummins, 20, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi-20.948; 15. Jimmy Light, 118, Thomas-20.957; 16. Brian Ruhlman, 49, Ruhlman-21.192; 17. Steve Gennetten, 3, Gennetten-21.276; 18. Dave Berkheimer, 31, Berkheimer-21.457; 19. Gregg Cory, 32, Williams/Cory-21.655; 20. Tom Savage, 38, Savage-22.205; 21. Mark Bitner, 4, Yeska-22.386; 22. Travis Mahoney, 65, SV-NT.

FEATURE: (50 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Daison Pursley (2), 2. Justin Grant (1), 3. Mitchel Moles (4), 4. Logan Seavey (6), 5. Chase Dietz (8), 6. Carmen Perigo (12), 7. Briggs Danner (13), 8. Matt Westfall (5), 9. C.J. Leary (7), 10. Jake Swanson (3), 11. Chase Stockon (11), 12. Kyle Steffens (10), 13. Alex Bright (9), 14. Brian Ruhlman (16), 15. Kyle Cummins (14), 16. Mark Bitner (18), 17. Gregg Cory (19), 18. Steve Gennetten (17), 19. Dave Berkheimer (20), 20. Tom Savage (22), 21. Travis Mahoney (21), 22. Jimmy Light (15). 24:08.168 (New Track Record)

FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-2 Justin Grant, Laps 3-50 Daison Pursley.

USAC SILVER CROWN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Justin Grant-396, 2-C.J. Leary-328, 3-Matt Westfall-272, 4-Logan Seavey-244, 5-Kody Swanson-232, 6-Kyle Steffens-205, 7-Gregg Cory-205, 8-Dave Berkheimer-185, 9-Mario Clouser-178, 10-Kaylee Bryson-175.

USAC PARALLAX GROUP NATIONAL PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Kale Drake-135, 2-Briggs Danner-63, 3-C.J. Leary-58, 4-Robert Ballou-57, 5-Gunnar Setser-57, 6-Kyle Cummins-56, 7-Justin Grant-51, 8-Chase Stockon-50, 9-Jacob Denney-35, 10-Kevin Thomas Jr.-34.

NEXT USAC SILVER CROWN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: June 27, 2025 – Winchester Speedway – Winchester, Indiana – 1/2-Mile Paved Oval – 34th Rich Vogler Classic

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CONTINGENCY AWARD WINNERS:

Dirt Draft Practice Fastest Driver: Daison Pursley (20.230)
Honest Abe Roofing / Allgaier Performance Fast Qualifier: Justin Grant (20.088)
Rod End Supply Hard Charger: Carmen Perigo (12th to 6th)
Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Race: Carmen Perigo


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410 Sprints - Winged

410 A Feature (25 Laps): 1. 55W-Mike Wagner[6]; 2. 67-Justin Whittall[11]; 3. 95-Garrett Bard[4]; 4. 12D-Lance Dewease[10]; 5. 45-Jeff Halligan[7]; 6. 12-Blane Heimbach[3]; 7. 35-Austin Bishop[1]; 8. 23-Chase Dietz[15]; 9. 8E-Brock Zearfoss[9]; 10. 12J-Derek Hauck[2]; 11. 99-Devin Adams[14]; 12. 55-Logan Wagner[8]; 13. 11-TJ Stutts[16]; 14. 22E-Nash Ely[12]; 15. 47K-Kody Lehman[5]; 16. 53AU-Alex Attard[24]; 17. 5W-Lucas Wolfe[20]; 18. 69X-Kassidy Kreitz[17]; 19. 33-Gerard McIntyre Jr[21]; 20. 53-Kyle Keen[13]; 21. 8S-Trenton Sheaffer[23]; 22. 77-Michael Walter[19]; 23. 13-Daison Pursley[22]; 24. 11Z-Zach Newlin[18]

410 B Feature (8 Laps): 1. 33-Gerard McIntyre Jr[7]; 2. 13-Daison Pursley[4]; 3. 8S-Trenton Sheaffer[1]; 4. 53AU-Alex Attard[2]; 5. 17B-Steve Buckwalter[3]; 6. 29-Logan McCandless[11]; 7. 10-Jake Waters[9]; 8. 23L-Jimmy Light[8]; 9. 19R-Tylar Rutherford[6]; 10. 24B-Dustin Baney[10]; 11. D57-Jeff Miller[5]; 12. 5K-Jake Karklin[12]; 13. 22-Doug Hammaker[13]; 14. 0-Rick Lafferty[14]; 15. 18J-JT Ferry[15]

410 Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 95-Garrett Bard[2]; 2. 55W-Mike Wagner[1]; 3. 55-Logan Wagner[9]; 4. 53-Kyle Keen[3]; 5. 69X-Kassidy Kreitz[6]; 6. 8S-Trenton Sheaffer[5]; 7. D57-Jeff Miller[7]; 8. 10-Jake Waters[8]; 9. 0-Rick Lafferty[4]

410 Heat 2 (8 Laps): 1. 12D-Lance Dewease[1]; 2. 22E-Nash Ely[4]; 3. 47K-Kody Lehman[2]; 4. 99-Devin Adams[9]; 5. 11Z-Zach Newlin[8]; 6. 53AU-Alex Attard[5]; 7. 19R-Tylar Rutherford[7]; 8. 22-Doug Hammaker[3]; 9. 18J-JT Ferry[6]

410 Heat 3 (8 Laps): 1. 8E-Brock Zearfoss[2]; 2. 45-Jeff Halligan[4]; 3. 12J-Derek Hauck[1]; 4. 23-Chase Dietz[7]; 5. 77-Michael Walter[5]; 6. 17B-Steve Buckwalter[6]; 7. 33-Gerard McIntyre Jr[9]; 8. 24B-Dustin Baney[8]; 9. 5K-Jake Karklin[3]

410 Heat 4 (8 Laps): 1. 35-Austin Bishop[2]; 2. 12-Blane Heimbach[3]; 3. 67-Justin Whittall[5]; 4. 11-TJ Stutts[4]; 5. 5W-Lucas Wolfe[6]; 6. 13-Daison Pursley[8]; 7. 23L-Jimmy Light[1]; 8. 29-Logan McCandless[7]