June 28, 2025 | By Richie Murray, USAC Media

jUSTIN GRANT JOINS EXCLUSIVE GROUP WITH FREMONT USAC SPRINT VICTORY

FREMONT, Ohio—There are now three members of the 60-win club in USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship racing. After Saturday night’s round at Ohio’s Fremont Speedway, you can count Justin Grant among them.

The Ione, California racer took over the lead after Robert Ballou’s mid-race misfortune, then fended off a pesky Logan Seavey for the latter half to earn his third consecutive USAC National Sprint Car win, his sixth overall on the season and a milestone 60th series win of his career.

Grant is now only one victory behind Brady Bacon (61 wins) for second on the all-time win list and just two behind Dave Darland (62 wins) for first place on the all-time list. Furthermore, Grant is now closing in on another couple of milestones with Fremont’s score marking his 96th overall USAC-sanctioned feature victory and his 88th career USAC national main event triumph.

In what was the first USAC National Sprint Car event held at Fremont’s 1/3-mile dirt oval since 2003, more than 22 years ago, many drivers struggled to find the feel of their car. Grant was no exception in his TOPP Motorsports/NOS Energy Drink – TOPP Industries – LA Poly/Maxim/Kistler Chevy.

“To be honest, every time I came in, I told the guys, ‘I feel terrible,’ Grant admitted. “Apparently, everybody else felt worse, I guess. I didn’t really feel like I was putting great laps together but I was just trying to get myself to where I was hard to pass or keep myself hard to pass. When you race these things enough, you kind of start to learn where it’s important to make speed and where you can give up ground and not get passed. I was in a little bit of conserve mode toward the end.”

Chase Stockon was superb early in the going as he raced from his outside front row starting spot to get the initial advantage on pole sitter Kevin Thomas Jr., then proceeded to lead the first four laps. Simultaneously, third starting Robert Ballou was surging along the bottom. On lap five, he used the low line to advance past Stockon in turns three and four and appeared to be in total control from there.

Grant moved to second as he dove under Stockon for the position in turn two on lap nine. Seavey followed suit a lap later in turn two as he too went below Stockon to slot into third. Despite Grant and Seavey’s advancements, Ballou was steadily increasing his lead as he closed in on the back end of the field.

By lap 14, Ballou’s advantage had grown to a whopping 3.2 seconds. However, as he entered turn three around the outside of 23rd running Bryce Dues. Without warning, Ballou’s car biked up, then dug in on the left side wheels and promptly sent him flipping over nose-to-tail from side-to-side. Ballou ultimately returned after repairs in the Indy Metal Finishing Work Area. Restarting at the tail, he was able to climb back to 12th at the checkered.

Upon the lap 14 resumption, it initially appeared Seavey had the faster car than Grant. Seavey was draped all over Grant’s rear bumper lap-after-lap and continued to hold serve when the top-two entered lapped traffic which, believe it or not, was a welcome sight for Grant.

“I was super happy to have that row of lappers on the bottom,” Grant stated. “I kind of settled in because I was bouncing and losing the nose and it was easy to slip off the top of two there. As long as I had that row of lappers there, I could settle it.”

Seavey was forced to follow Grant around the high side for the remaining laps as a trail of lappers occupied the bottom, making it an insurmountable quest for Seavey to get a run and dive low under Grant getting into turns one and three.

While, basically, the final 12 laps through traffic played out just as Grant had hoped, the 30th and final circuit was a different story on the other hand.

“On the last lap, we kind of lost it,” Grant acknowledged. “One of them got caught on the top and I got a little messed up and didn’t get off two very well, and I thought, ‘ooh, I better get down into three this lap.’ So, I ran down in there and cheated it and got across there in front of Logan.”

When all was said and done, Grant crossed the finish line as the winner 0.483 seconds ahead of runner-up Logan Seavey while series point leader Kyle Cummins took third with Mitchel Moles fourth and Chase Stockon rounding out the top-five.

Briggs Danner earned Rod End Supply Hard Charger honors after enduring a rough start to the night with mechanical issues forcing his Hogue Racing Enterprises team to make an engine change after not being able to make it out in time for qualifying. Starting 24th in the feature, Danner passed 17 drivers to finish seventh.

Prior to Saturday night, Brian Smith's last USAC National Sprint Car feature start came 23 years ago in 2002. During the semi-feature, he went three-wide around the outside of turn four to grab a transfer spot into the feature at Fremont Speedway. That earned him the Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Night.

While Grant won his third series feature in a row, Logan Seavey, meanwhile also continued a personal streak by recording fast time in Honest Abe Roofing Qualifying for the third USAC National Sprint Car event in a row. Seavey's 19th career series quick time moved him to 27th all-time alongside 1967 champion Greg Weld.

It was also a night of rewriting the USAC record books at Fremont. Seavey’s qualifying run of 14.505 surpassed the previous record of 14.665 held by Jay Drake since 2003. Additionally, Mitchel Moles broke a 44-year-old eight lap USAC National Sprint Car track record by finishing his heat race victory on Saturday night with a time of 1:59.922. That surpassed the former record of 2:16.07, set in 1981 by Sheldon Kinser, by nearly 17 seconds. However, just a handful of minutes later, Kale Drake took over possession of the eight lap record. Drake’s time of 1:57.946 in his heat race broke Moles’ short lived record.


USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: June 28, 2025 – Fremont Speedway – Fremont, Ohio – 1/3-Mile Dirt Track

HONEST ABE ROOFING QUALIFYING: 1. Logan Seavey, 57, Abacus-14.505 (New Track Record); 2. Kyle Cummins, 3p, Petty-14.646; 3. Justin Grant, 4, TOPP-14.702; 4. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-14.719; 5. Chase Stockon, 92, Sertich-14.736; 6. Kevin Thomas Jr., 3R, Rock Steady-14.751; 7. Jake Swanson, 5T, Daming Swanson-14.955; 8. Nate Carle, 14c, Carle-14.969; 9. Hayden Reinbold, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-14.972; 10. Shawn Westerfeld, 4J, Fischesser/Owen-15.075; 11. Dustin Ingle, 2DI, Ingle-15.077; 12. C.J. Leary, 21AZ, Team AZ/Curb-Agajanian-15.115; 13. Matt Westfall, 54, Westfall-15.155; 14. Max Adams, 21, Hery-15.262; 15. Gunnar Setser, 5G, KO-15.272; 16. Mitchel Moles, 19AZ, Reinbold/Underwood-15.326; 17. Saban Bibent, 98, Wedgewood-15.353; 18. Kale Drake, 2B, 2B Racing-15.426; 19. Steve Irwin, 0, Flying Zero-15.505; 20. Mike Miller, 33m, Marshall-15.812; 21. Ryan Barr, 21B, Barr-15.963; 22. Bryce Dues, 23D, Dues-16.002; 23. Brian Smith, 2+, Smith-16.043; 24. Kayla Roell, 4K, Roell-16.091; 25. Jerry Dahms, 75, Dahms-16.120; 26. Briggs Danner, 39, Hogue-NT.

CAR IQ FIRST HEAT: (8 laps, top-6 transfer to the feature) 1. Mitchel Moles, 2. Matt Westfall, 3. Robert Ballou, 4. Jake Swanson, 5. Logan Seavey, 6. Shawn Westerfeld, 7. Steve Irwin, 8. Bryce Dues, 9. Jerry Dahms. 1:59.922

K1 RACEGEAR SECOND HEAT: (8 laps, top-6 transfer to the feature) 1. Max Adams, 2. Kyle Cummins, 3. Chase Stockon, 4. Saban Bibent, 5. Nate Carle, 6. Briggs Danner, 7. Mike Miller, 8. Dustin Ingle, 9. Brian Smith. 2:04.226

USAC GEAR THIRD HEAT: (8 laps, top-6 transfer to the feature) 1. Kale Drake, 2. Gunnar Setser, 3. Hayden Reinbold, 4. C.J. Leary, 5. Kevin Thomas Jr., 6. Justin Grant, 7. Kayla Roell, 8. Ryan Barr. 1:57.946 (New Track Record)

ELLIOTT’S CUSTOM TRAILERS & CARTS SEMI: (10 laps, top-6 transfer to the feature) 1. Dustin Ingle, 2. Steve Irwin, 3. Mike Miller, 4. Brian Smith, 5. Kayla Roell, 6. Bryce Dues, 7. Jerry Dahms, 8. Ryan Barr. NT

FEATURE: (30 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Justin Grant (4), 2. Logan Seavey (6), 3. Kyle Cummins (5), 4. Mitchel Moles (8), 5. Chase Stockon (2), 6. Kevin Thomas Jr. (1), 7. Briggs Danner (24), 8. Jake Swanson (10), 9. Max Adams (7), 10. Gunnar Setser (17), 11. C.J. Leary (15), 12. Robert Ballou (3), 13. Hayden Reinbold (12), 14. Nate Carle (11), 15. Brian Smith (22), 16. Matt Westfall (16), 17. Saban Bibent (18), 18. Shawn Westerfeld (13), 19. Kayla Roell (23), 20. Kale Drake (9), 21. Mike Miller (20), 22. Steve Irwin (19), 23. Bryce Dues (21), 24. Dustin Ingle (14). NT

FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-4 Chase Stockon, Laps 5-13 Robert Ballou, Laps 14-30 Justin Grant.

**Robert Ballou flipped on lap 14 of the feature.

USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Kyle Cummins-1446, 2-Justin Grant-1353, 3-Mitchel Moles-1201, 4-Briggs Danner-1136, 5-Logan Seavey-1129, 6-Robert Ballou-1086, 7-Jake Swanson-1081, 8-Kevin Thomas Jr.-1020, 9-C.J. Leary-1003, 10-Kale Drake-1001.

USAC PARALLAX GROUP NATIONAL PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Kale Drake-135, 2-Briggs Danner-80, 3-C.J. Leary-67, 4-Gunnar Setser-64, 5-Kyle Cummins-61, 6-Robert Ballou-60, 7-Justin Grant-59, 8-Chase Stockon-50, 9-Kevin Thomas Jr.-39, 10-Jacob Denney-35.

NEXT USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: June 29, 2025 – Millstream Speedway – Findlay, Ohio – 4/10-Mile Dirt Track


CONTINGENCY AWARD WINNERS:

Dirt Draft Hot Laps Fastest Driver: Robert Ballou (15.065)
Honest Abe Roofing Fast Qualifier: Logan Seavey (14.505)
Car IQ First Heat Winner: Mitchel Moles
K1 RaceGear Second Heat Winner: Max Adams
USAC Gear Third Heat Winner: Kale Drake
Elliott’s Custom Trailers & Carts Semi Winner: Dustin Ingle
Rod End Supply Hard Charger: Briggs Danner (24th to 7th)
Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Night: Brian Smith