BRL DSS S11 R4 Recap

15 Apr 2022
Bootleg Racing League | Season 11 | Round 4
Dirt Street Stock Series | I-55 Speedway
Photograph by: Billy Northcutt
Sim Racing Software: iRacing

William Hargreaves with the Dirt Panda Racing Team led every lap to the checkered flag tonight with the Bootleg Racing League Dirt Street Stock Series at the I-55 Speedway ahead of Brandyn Proudfoot and Billy Northcutt. “It’s a great track, I think it’s pretty racy all around really.”, Hargreaves commented after his photo finish win tonight, “My only hope was to defend that slider line. I knew [Proudfoot] was going to go for it, and I just had to send it down there as far as I could and hope it worked.”

William Hargreaves and Billy Northcutt started the night off matching fast laps at 14.565 in qualifying with the pole going to Hargreaves who led the field to the green from the front row inside of Brandyn Proudfoot in the first heat. After several attempts on the lead from Proudfoot, Hargreaves was able to hold him off and take the checkered flag. Billy Northcutt led the second heat with Chris Davis to his outside.

Northcutt cleared Davis quickly and instantly went on the defensive not giving Davis an opportunity to challenge him. John Wilson and Chris Hill started the B Main consolation race from the front row. A strong launch from Wilson set him off to a good start as the field single filed out. Wilson was able to outpace the rest of the field pulling away by over 0.7 before taking the checkered flag.

Hargreaves took the field to the green flag starting off the 40-lap feature event with Northcutt to his inside. Hargreaves wasn’t able to clear Northcutt as the drivers battled side by side around the first few laps before Northcutt slid back into 2nd to defend against Brandyn Proudfoot close behind in 3rd. Chris Davis started challenging for 3rd trading sliders with Proudfoot back and forth as the drivers passed the 10-lap mark.

Proudfoot was able to get to the outside of Northcutt but wasn’t able to clear as Proudfoot made contact with the outside wall and found himself back in another heated battle with Davis. The battle came to a head as Proudfoot got loose and fell behind Chris Hill before settling back in 5th ahead of Joe Segalla. Going into the second half of the event, Davis and Hill battled hard over 3rd and Hargreaves managed to pull away from Northcutt by over 2 seconds.

Davis and Hill came together with 10 laps to go unfortunately sending both drivers around and to the rear of the field. The gap of over 2.5 seconds that Hargreaves had built over Northcutt was taken away as the caution came out from that incident. Hargreaves ran the outside line to clear Northcutt, but Proudfoot took advantage of the restart to stay with the leader and quickly took 2nd place away. Proudfoot made a hard charge for the front, but it wasn’t enough in the end as they crossed the line slamming doors with Hargreaves crossed the line 0.029 ahead of Proudfoot.

William Hargreaves took the lead away from Johnny Ratley with his win tonight now with 317 points total. Brandyn Proudfoot moved up to 2nd place 7 points behind the leader. Billy Northcutt trails behind in 3rd at 290 points with Ratley and Bobby Hayes rounding out the top 5 in the points standings 4 weeks into the season. The drivers now set their sights to Cedar Lake Speedway on April 22nd with all of the mudslinging action broadcast live at 7:10PM EDT only on the Virtual Grip Network!