PGRL S2 R12 Recap

16 August 2022
Pretty Good Racing League | Season 2 | Round 12
Premier Series | Richmond Raceway
Sim Racing Software: iRacing

Brian Yaczik with Loud Pedal Motorsports took the checkered flag tonight in the Todd Kirkwood Memorial 200 at Richmond Raceway with the Pretty Good Racing League ahead of Scott Eckrich and Mike Rasimas. “The car looks good, drove fantastic tonight. I don’t know if I necessarily did anything amazing but I just kind of stuck to what’s been kind of working for me lately and having to unlearn a lot of bad habits”, Yaczik commented as the commotion around track started to subside. Jeff Ward took the title of Season 2 Champion after dominating in the points over the past 12 weeks.

James Krahula led the field to the green flag to start off the final round of season 2 tonight at Richmond Raceway with Isaiah Dupre alongside him on the front row. Scott Eckrich started in the rear of the 24-car field with Jeff Ward starting inside of the top 10 after a rough race last week at Michigan. Ward quickly moved up through the pack getting up to 4th within the first few laps to ensure he would be clear of any potential incidents early on. Mike Rasimas was also moving toward the front quickly jumping several spots and running in 7th with only 10 laps completed.

Krahula continued to control the field approaching the 20-lap mark as Ward climbed up to 3rd behind Greg O’Berry and Eckrich broke into the top 10 running in 8th place. O’Berry overtook Krahula for the lead on lap 26 and started to pull away as Eckrich and Ward were both caught up in an incident within the front of the field involving many drivers and bringing out the caution. Ward’s resulting damage was minor enough that he was able to stay out on track and only fell back to 4th while Eckrich dropping back to 20th after running down pit road to take repairs.

O’Berry took the green flag as racing resumed going into lap 34 as Brian Yaczik battled Krahula for 2nd place. Eckrich again pushed up through the field as he broke back into the top 10 with 50 laps completed while Yaczik was being pressured by Ward for 2nd place up ahead. O’Berry got out of shape and that allowed Yaczik to take the lead away with Ward following him around and Mike Rasimas was close behind working on closing the gap to the leaders. O’Berry continued to fall back through the field to 6th place and under pressure from Michael Chrobok.

Yaczik continued to control the field ahead of Ward as the drivers crossed the halfway point of the night as the two leaders built up over a 2 second lead over Woody Mahan in 3rd place. Eckrich was back up to 6th and closing on Chrobok ahead. The second half of the race was plagued with cautions while the drivers struggled to get through a clean restart and many drivers had their nights ended early before the race got back underway going into lap 125 with Yaczik still in control of the field and Eckrich up to 2nd place with 13 cars still on the lead lap.

Ward was up to 3rd behind Eckrich with Adam Jurski trying to get a nose beneath him as the field tried to single file out. Ward was looking to the outside of Eckrich as Rasimas took 4th place away from Jurski with Drew Carroll close behind keeping the pressure up. Yaczik was able to maintain a strong lead over Eckrich as the 24-car field started to spread out around the track with 65 laps remaining. Jurski fell back to 7th slowly being overtaken by Carroll and O’Berry.

Ward was starting to fall off from Eckrich’s pace going into the last 50 laps of the night and was falling back within reach of Rasimas while Yaczik held his lead over Eckrich with a consistent 0.4 second gap between them. The gap between Eckrich and Ward had stretched out to over 2 seconds as Rasimas overtook for 3rd and O’Berry closed up close on Ward’s rear bumper clearing for the position a lap later. Ward seemed to be running cautiously and wasn’t putting up much of a fight for position also allowing Carroll to go by with 40 laps to go.

With 20 laps remaining, only 9 drivers were still on the lead lap and Yaczik had stretched his lead over Eckrich out to almost 1 second as the two drivers were preparing to potentially make a green flag pit stop for fuel in the final moments. Eckrich fell far off the pace trying save fuel with Yaczik over 3 seconds ahead still in control of the field with only 6 laps to go. Brian Yaczik took the white flag and coasted around the final lap on fumes to take the checkered flag with Scott Eckrich, Mike Rasimas, Greg O’Berry and Jeff Ward rounding out the top 5 finishers tonight in the Todd Kirkwood Memorial 200.

Jeff Ward with GRAAFix LC Motorsports took the championship for season 2 with the Pretty Good Racing League with 406 points. “All year we were just focusing on consistency”, Ward shared with us as he celebrated the championship, “Race wins are cool, but this is what it’s all about right here. Big picture and we got it done.” Brian Yaczik finished the season in 2nd only 15 points behind Ward. Drew Carroll took 3rd place with 368 points ahead of Scott Eckrich by only 1 point. Thomas George rounds out the top 5 in the points with 336 points as season 2 comes to a close tonight at Richmond. Season 3 kicks off next Tuesday on August 23rd at Watkins Glen with all of the intense action broadcast live at 8:50PM ET exclusively on the Virtual Grip Network!