RUN IT BACK: Seay Wins Feature, Tucker Wins Season 2 Tour Championship with Big-Blocks at Lernerville
Eight consecutive top-fives for Tucker crown him Tour’s first-ever points champ while Seay starts, ends series with Victory Lane trip
SARVER, PA – Jan. 27, 2021 – Eight top-five finishes in eight weeks of racing. Now there’s a statistic worthy of a championship.
That’s exactly what iRacing Pro driver Kendal Tucker ended up with after the checkered fell in Wednesday night’s VP Racing Fuels Big-Block Modified Feature event at Lernerville Speedway. For his hard-fought efforts aboard the DIRTcar eSports Tour of Season 2, he now brings the first ever custom-made DIRTcar eSports Tour trophy home to his sim rig in Mt. Airy, NC.
Crossing the stripe right in front of him was the Feature winner, Evan Seay, who capped off his Season 2 campaign the same way he started it – in Victory Lane after leading green-to-checkered in the 50-lap contest.
“It’s definitely pretty cool to come out here and pick up the final win of the season,” Seay told announcer Chase Raudman in the DIRTVision post-race interview. “It’s a great cap to the second season of DIRTcar eSports.”
Over eight weeks of competition, Tucker never finished outside of the top-five. Not once. His worst finish came in Race #7, Pro Late Models at Eldora, where he placed fourth. Wednesday night marked his fourth runner-up finish of the season, just a few car-lengths back from Seay at the checkers.
“Season 2, it honestly couldn’t have gone any better, besides getting couple more wins,” Tucker said. “The ultimate goal at the end of the year, once we heard about this deal [DIRTcar eSports] was putting on, was just to be consistent.”
Seay led the points standings after Season 2’s opening round before Tucker took it over soon after his win with the Pro Late Models at The Dirt Track at Charlotte on December 9. He and Tucker kept it close at the top with their solid night-in and night-out finishes, but Seay sat out the fifth and sixth races on the Tour due to other non-sim commitments, forcing him to retire his horse in the points race.
“Congrats to Kendal [Tucker] on the championship. We had to miss a couple races, but I think we would have been pretty close in the points if I’d have been able to do those couple that we missed,” Seay said.
Regardless, Seay made up for it in the end by leading all 50 laps of Wednesday night’s Feature – his first-ever venture out with the Big-Blocks at Lernerville, which made it all that much more impressive.
“Honestly, I didn’t even know how this night was going to go. I hadn’t run this track with the Big-Blocks yet, so I was kinda winging everything,” he said.
Seay went largely unchallenged for the lead during most of the race. Except on the final lap, where Tucker dove low hard in Turn 1 and pulled a big slide job on the #33. But it didn’t stick, and Seay was easily able to cross back underneath him and take the lead back down the backstretch. Seay held strong in Turn 4 and brought it back home, collecting $250 for the Feature win as the only Tour driver in Season 2 to win more than one main event.
Overall, both drivers had a terrific season as regulars of the DIRTcar eSports Tour and have plans to chase a points title again in Season 3.
“Hopefully, we’ll be back to defend the title and pick up a couple more wins along the way,” Tucker said.
Feature (50 Laps) – 1. Evan Seay, 2. Kendal Tucker, 3. Logan Rumsey, 4. Richard Murtaugh Jr, 5. Dustin Hall, 6. Chris Hile, 7. Blake Matjoulis, 8. Kevin Dedmon, 9. Jesse Enterkin, 10. Ross Wece, 11. William Racine, 12. Michael Canady, 13. Matt Yorker, 14. Alex Bergeron, 15. Matty Watkins, 16. CJ LaVair, 17. Joe Grabianowski, 18. Joshua Kunstbeck, 19. Chance Carr, 20. Tyler Ducharme, 21. Jonathan Nause, 22. Boddie Parker, 23. Cody Zobrist, 24. Hayden Cardwell
SHARK BITE: Jackson Wins Third Street Stock Feature of Season 2 at Lanier
McMahan, Erickson garner Tyler Bachman Enterprises’ first top-10 finishes in final race
Tyler Jackson has reigned supreme over the Chevy Performance Street Stock League in DIRTcar eSports Season 2.
With his third Feature win in eight weeks of competition Wednesday night at Lanier National Speedway, Jackson remained the only driver on the circuit to win multiple Feature events.
But what was his secret to success at Lanier?
“I finally put a Qualifying effort together, and that makes a huge difference in these Street Stocks,” Jackson told announcer Rick Eshelman in the DIRTVision post-race interview. “They’re just so slow and heavy; if you bury yourself in Qualifying, it’s really hard to pass.”
While the League does not tally points throughout the season and declare an eventual champion, Jackson may as well have been the informal “champion” with his performances throughout the season, which never saw him finish outside of the top-10 one time in seven starts.
Another strong driver who competed mostly in the latter half of the League schedule was Paul Visage, who collected his third top-10 of the season Wednesday night after chasing Jackson down for the better part of the race.
“I got down there and hung the left sides in the moisture there, but you couldn’t really pass. You could get a good enough run to get up beside [Jackson], but not get by cleanly, so it was a lot of throttle control to really get around that place,” Visage said.
While they had several entries over the course of the eight-race schedule, the Tyler Bachman Enterprises (TBE) team, headquartered in scenic Morgantown, WV, was unable to muster a top-10 finish through the first seven events of the season.
That all changed Wednesday night with newcomers Brayden McMahan and Mitch Erickson posting seventh and tenth-place finishes, respectively. The team’s biggest night of the season came with all the firepower the 25-car field could handle, as a grand total of six TBE cars made the Feature, much to the delight of team executives who are currently working on their plans for competition in Season 3.
Feature (30 Laps) – 1. Tyler Jackson, 2. Paul Visage, 3. Preston Dimsdale, 4. Caleb Hudgeons, 5. Steve Miskolczi, 6. Nathan Lemons, 7. Brayden McMahan, 8. Larry Barber Jr, 9. Mark Mitchell, 10. Mitch Erickson, 11. Hank Silver, 12. Tyler Schneider, 13. Sage Luther, 14. Dennis Anderson Jr, 15. Jaxon Steele, 16. Nick Graziano, 17. Mike Watt, 18. Dakota Osborn, 19. Anthony Corini, 20. Blaze Benedict, 21. Robert Palmer; 22. Clifford Bellomy; 23. Brian Brunscheen, 24. Sterling Beard
DIRTcar Racing is brought to fans by many important sponsors and partners, including: DIRTVision (Official Live Broadcast Partner), Hoosier Racing Tire (Official Tire), SIS Insurance (Official Insurance Provider), VP Racing Fuels (Official Racing Fuel), Chevy Performance Parts, iRacing (Official Online Racing Game), Arizona Sport Shirts/Gotta Race, and NAPA Auto Parts (SDS). Contingency sponsors include: ARP (automotive Racing products), ASI Race Wear (SDS), Bassett, Bicknell Racing Products, Billy Whittaker Cars & Trux (SDS), Cometic Gasket (SDS), COMP Cams, Drydene, Fast Shafts, Fox Factory (SDS), Arizona Sport Shirts/Gotta Race, Jerovetz Motorsports Shock Service, KSE Racing Products, Quarter Master, Schoenfeld Headers, Summit Racing Equipment, and Wrisco (Exclusive Racing Aluminum) (SDS); along with manufacturer sponsors, including: Beyea Headers, FireAde, Intercomp, K1 Race Gear, Racing Electronics and Velocita USA.