Virtual Spotlight #02 – Justin Morton

The latest season of the Bootleg Racing League Super Late Model Series saw Justin Morton’s #9 machine rising to the top competing against the likes of J R Shepherd all the way to the very end. With 28 official iRacing wins, including a 12-hour Sebring event, and more than 75 iRacing league wins in his career, Justin has proven himself to be a serious competitor across the sim racing community. Justin currently races with the Bootleg Racing League, The Majors Series, and FUEL.

Justin first got serious in the sim racing world when he joined a league of drivers in Assetto Corsa that he still runs with to this day. However, his first experiences with sim racing go even further back, he explains, “Dad got into NASCAR around the time Jeff Gordon was making waves and I took to watching it along with him. Around 2001 he built a USB racing wheel, or whatever the port would have been at the time, out of a junk yard wheel and some wood along with bungee cords for some resistance on the wheel. I was hooked and, with Dad being a very tech savvy guy, he got me NASCAR Racing Season 2002 along with a Thrustmaster NASCAR Pro Force Feedback.”

Although he feels fairly well balanced across all racing disciplines, Justin still favors short track oval racing if he had to choose one, but he admits that the dirt midgets are the most fun to him. Open wheel are his weak point as he adds, “I feel I can be pretty quick in the cars, but they have to be driven on such a sharp edge I normally find some way to screw it up.”

With such a long career of accomplishments, Justin narrowed down a few of his favor moments over the years. “Winning the Majors America Pro Championship with the FORGE team. [It] was a hard-fought championship all season and we managed to come away with the win. A close second would be winning a full season, full distance races, truck league. [I] had a season long back and forth with another talented driver and it pretty much went down to the final race.”

Although the #9 has been a steadfast in his career for years, he admits that it wasn’t his first choice. “My first number choice used to be #15, but the league I was running in at the time had retired the number for a member that passed away. [I] floated around with a few numbers from #44 to #11 and eventually ended up liking the #9 being a Chase Elliott fan and kinda got dubbed as Chase Elliott with all the oval races I came up just short of winning like he was doing at the time.”

Within the Bootleg Racing League, Justin admits to having several drivers he would consider to be direct competition each week. “I would say I have four competitive rivals with Mathew Thunhorst, J R Shepherd, Kenny Kibbey, and Austin Boelke. Such a tight group at the top of BRL and every one of them races fair and clean and makes it really fun.” Within the Majors, he points out the rivalry between FORGE and EVOLV. FUEL brings Thomas Bressi to mind, “He’s on an absolute heater of a streak finishing first and second in 10/11 races and leads the championship going into the final 3 by quite a bit.”

We’d like to thank Justin Morton for taking the time to speak with us giving us a chance to get to know him a little better and we here at the Virtual Grip Network wish him luck in his sim racing career. His racing talent is out there for all to see every Saturday night with the Bootleg Racing League Super Late Model Series at 8:55PM ET broadcast live only on the Virtual Grip Network!