Several of iRacing’s greatest dirt racers have found their way to DIRTcar eSports Victory Lane since its establishment in 2020. Rocky Battenfield may have just produced one of the most exciting in Street Stock League history Wednesday night, beating points leader Kyle Jared and Brunson Behning to the finish line by .024 seconds to score his first career DIRTcar eSports Feature win.
Battenfield, the iRacing Street Stock veteran racer from Oklahoma, started on the pole and took the early lead, holding off all challengers through the first 20 laps of the 30-lap event. After a few restarts, League points leader Jared had ramped-up momentum and gave Battenfield a serious challenge to his inside, taking the lead briefly on Lap 25 with a strong run through Turns 1-2.
As soon as Battenfield retook the lead out of Turn 4, a caution flag was displayed, pausing the battle briefly. After the ensuing restart, the battle came to a boiling point.
Coming to the white flag, Jared and Behning trailed Battenfield by only a bumper’s length and charged into Turn 1. Behning gave Battenfield a nudge on his left-rear corner out of Turn 2 and got under the #97 going into Turn 3. Jared, who carried momentum on the top out of Turn 2, quickly changed lanes entering Turn 3 and darted his #045 to the very bottom underneath both Behning and Battenfield, making it a three-wide drag race for the win coming to the checkered flag.
Without any big contact, Battenfield barely edged both drivers at the line to take the win and the $100 check.
“Whooo, I tell you what, I am sweating bullets right now,” Battenfield said in the DIRTcar eSports Twitch post-race interview. “That was so much fun.
“I figured if I could just hold the bottom, I would be okay, but even [Jared] was getting a pretty good run on the outside of me. He’d catch me in the right-rear a little bit going into Turn 3, which really tightened me up, but… that finish, how about that?”
Jared held onto second at the line and again increased his points lead, while Behning crossed in third – a career best with DIRTcar eSports.
ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view full results)
Feature (30 laps) – 1. 97-Rocky Battenfield [1]; 2. 45-Kyle Jared [9]; 3. 37-Brunson Behning2 [14]; 4. 52-Billy Northcutt [13]; 5. 18-Jaycee Floyd [3]; 6. 1-Kaden Reynolds [4]; 7. 26-Sage Luther [2]; 8. 13-Justin Hopkins2 [10]; 9. 68-Ronald Pyles [6]; 10. 27-Joshua Thomas4 [15]; 11. 5-Ian Goode [24]; 12. 2-Ty Dickenson [8]; 13. 5-Isaac Salas [22]; 14. 43-Grady Ehrman [5]; 15. 77-Kyle Ramsey2 [17]; 16. 33-Brady Thompson2 [7]; 17. 64-Logan Koteles [21]; 18. 42-John Quill [19]; 19. 22-Myles Morse [11]; 20. 109-Shawn Hayes [12]; 21. 71-Daniel Stiffler [16]; 22. 2-Clifford Bellomy [20]; 23. 41-Christopher Hill9 [23]; DQ. 822-Tyler Jackson3 [18]