BRL NSCT S1 R12 Recap

13 January 2023
Bootleg Racing League | Season 1 | Round 12
National Sprint Car Trail | Lucas Oil Speedway

James Tiernan took the checkered flag tonight in his dirt non-winged 360 sprint in the Bootleg Racing League National Sprint Car Trail at Lucas Oil Speedway ahead of Stephen Spies and Aiden Young. “I knew fuel strategy was going to play into it, so it was one of the weirder sprint car races I’ve ever run”, Tiernan commented at the end of the night, “The pace was there it was there the entire time I just wanted to make sure I had enough fuel for the end.”

Joseph Grady set the fastest 4-lap average time for the 2nd week in a row tonight in qualifying at 14.390 ahead of James Tiernan and Brandyn Proudfoot securing the pole for the night. Grandy led the field around to take the green flag with Tiernan to his outside and got a strong jump off the start, but Tiernan was able to dive low and quickly take away the lead with Proudfoot following him around. Grandy battled back from the high side running side by side with Proudfoot as Stephen Spies closing quickly on the leaders.

Contact between Proudfoot and Grandy allowed Spies to get to Grandy’s inside as Proudfoot started to pull away in 2nd. Proudfoot caught Tiernan with 10 laps completed and started to challenge for the lead with Tiernan running low and Proudfoot committing to the highline. Going into the 2nd half of the race, Tiernan was quickly closing on the first of the lap traffic as Grandy ran down Proudfoot and retook 2nd place for a moment before he lost control of his sprint bringing out the caution as Spies made contact unable to avoid Grandy spinning in the middle of the track.

Tiernan had another strong jump off the start going into lap 18 with Julian Valadez taking advantage of the restart and jumping out ahead of Tiernan to claim the lead. Proudfoot found himself in a 3 wide battle with Aiden Young and Spies battling for 3rd place as Tiernan slowly started to reel Valadez back in for the lead. Going into the final laps, Tiernan had caught Valadez and was aggressively challenging for the lead as mechanical issues ended Valadez’s run and a separate incident further back in the field brought out a late race caution.

Tiernan took the green flag with 3 laps remaining with Proudfoot back up to 2nd. Spies and Young were pressuring Proudfoot as Tiernan took the white flag. Coming out of the final corner, James Tiernan took the checkered flag as Stephen Spies cleared into 2nd place with Aiden Young, Justin Morton, and Brandyn Proudfoot rounding out the top 5 tonight at Lucas Oil Speedway.

Aiden Young continues to lead the overall point standings with 747 points ahead of Justin Morton with 724 points. Bruce Jones sits in 3rd with 702 points. James Tiernan is the current leader in the 360 Sprint Car class with 227 points followed closely by Brandyn Proudfoot and Aiden Young. The drivers of the Bootleg Racing League next head to Richmond Raceway on January 20th in the silver crowns with all of the intense action brought to you live at 10:20PM ET exclusively on the Virtual Grip Network!