The DIRTcar eSports Midget debut at Lanier provided a plethora of exciting moments from start to finish
Dylan Houser stuck to his plan and became victorious. He didn’t let the pressure of others sway his mentality. Nor did he buckle under that pressure either.
He demonstrated the importance of a smooth and steady race during the first-ever DIRTcar eSports Midgets presented by NOS Energy Drink event Tuesday night at Lanier National Speedway, and became $250 richer because of that.
Mason Hannagan and Kendall Tucker were the class of the 24-car field, leading the majority of the race between them. Hannagan took the early lead but was unable to shake Tucker. While Hannagan rolled the bottom, Tucker found virtual grip around the top of the track and drove by him for the lead on Lap 4.
There was then a war, worthy of a Game of Thrones episode, from second to seventh with drivers crisscrossing every turn. Their bumpers were used as swords, for both attack and defense, and there was little care for personal space as they slid within inches of each other.
Hannagan had to fight off the likes of two-time iRacing World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car World Championship titleholder Alex Bergeron, Evan Seay and Houser – making his way from seventh in his #2 Midget – for second. He was able to do so for the majority of the event, especially when Bergeron was spun late in the event.
However, while everyone moved to the top during the second half of the event, including the leader, Houser committed himself to the top. Up there, he looked like a man running a mountain top while everyone else was at the base. But with an easy throttle and steady hands, Houser was flawless around the high line. He made his way to second and Tucker’s bumper as the checkered flag neared.
While Tucker continued to run the bottom, Houser slowly edged his way further and further alongside Tucker’s #00 Midget. He edged him by a nose for the lead and was able to hold it for a late-race caution.
When the race resumed, Houser returned to the top of the track and cruised his way to a big win in DIRTcar eSports competition with Tucker second and Hannagan third.
He stuck to his plan… and became victorious.
Due to unfortunate technical difficulties, the winner was unable to be interviewed.
The DIRTcar eSports Tour action continues next Wednesday, May 5, with the return of the Big Blocks presented by Hoosier Racing Tires at Cedar Lake Speedway.
Check out the entire race broadcast livestream for FREE on DIRTVision presented by Drydene or on the DIRTcar Facebook page at 7:50pm ET.
McMahan, Erickson garner Tyler Bachman Enterprises’ first top-10 finishes in final race
Tyler Jackson has reigned supreme over the Chevy Performance Street Stock League in DIRTcar eSports Season 2.
With his third Feature win in eight weeks of competition Wednesday night at Lanier National Speedway, Jackson remained the only driver on the circuit to win multiple Feature events.
But what was his secret to success at Lanier?
“I finally put a Qualifying effort together, and that makes a huge difference in these Street Stocks,” Jackson told announcer Rick Eshelman in the DIRTVision post-race interview. “They’re just so slow and heavy; if you bury yourself in Qualifying, it’s really hard to pass.”
While the League does not tally points throughout the season and declare an eventual champion, Jackson may as well have been the informal “champion” with his performances throughout the season, which never saw him finish outside of the top-10 one time in seven starts.
Another strong driver who competed mostly in the latter half of the League schedule was Paul Visage, who collected his third top-10 of the season Wednesday night after chasing Jackson down for the better part of the race.
“I got down there and hung the left sides in the moisture there, but you couldn’t really pass. You could get a good enough run to get up beside [Jackson], but not get by cleanly, so it was a lot of throttle control to really get around that place,” Visage said.
While they had several entries over the course of the eight-race schedule, the Tyler Bachman Enterprises (TBE) team, headquartered in scenic Morgantown, WV, was unable to muster a top-10 finish through the first seven events of the season.
That all changed Wednesday night with newcomers Brayden McMahan and Mitch Erickson posting seventh and tenth-place finishes, respectively. The team’s biggest night of the season came with all the firepower the 25-car field could handle, as a grand total of six TBE cars made the Feature, much to the delight of team executives who are currently working on their plans for competition in Season 3.
Feature (30 Laps) – 1. Tyler Jackson, 2. Paul Visage, 3. Preston Dimsdale, 4. Caleb Hudgeons, 5. Steve Miskolczi, 6. Nathan Lemons, 7. Brayden McMahan, 8. Larry Barber Jr, 9. Mark Mitchell, 10. Mitch Erickson, 11. Hank Silver, 12. Tyler Schneider, 13. Sage Luther, 14. Dennis Anderson Jr, 15. Jaxon Steele, 16. Nick Graziano, 17. Mike Watt, 18. Dakota Osborn, 19. Anthony Corini, 20. Blaze Benedict, 21. Robert Palmer; 22. Clifford Bellomy; 23. Brian Brunscheen, 24. Sterling Beard
BRASELTON, GA – There’s two new Dirt Street Stock sheriffs in town on iRacing, and their names are Richie and Zane Yost.
These two brothers from Griffith, IN, laid down the fastest two laps in Qualifying, won their Heat Races and dominated the inaugural 30-lap Chevy Performance Street Stock League Feature in Wednesday night’s kickoff to DIRTcar eSports Season 2 on DIRTVision.
Richie led all but two laps around the virtual 3/8-mile oval of Lanier National Speedway, making the most of the bottom-middle groove to hold off brother Zane and fellow podium finisher, Jesse Wall.
Wall, of Chesnee, SC, applied steady pressure on the Yosts the entire race but could not seem to find the speed to get by. Several caution flags spotted throughout the event presented him with a few chances to make it happen, but the leaders were just too strong out front.
One final chance for Zane and Wall presented itself with just three laps remaining as the field was bunched back up once again for a green-white-checkered finish. Even with the two right on his rear bumper, Richie held strong and brought it back home for the final checkered flag of the evening.
Richie picked up $100 for his first DIRTcar eSports Feature win just one hour after competing in the Summit Racing Equipment UMP Modified Feature aboard the DIRTcar eSports Tour at the virtual Kokomo Speedway.
The Chevy Performance Street Stock League action continues on the DIRTcar eSports network next Wednesday night, Dec. 9, with the first of two visits on the Season 2 schedule to the USA International Speedway. Registration for this event will remain open for all new entrants until Monday, Dec. 7, at 8 p.m. ET.
Don’t miss a moment of the action! Tune into DIRTVision presented by Drydene every Wednesday night to catch both DIRTcar eSports League races, and visit iRacing.com to learn more about the best in motorsports simulation.
Kevin Dedmon holds off iRacing stars to earn first DIRTcar eSports win at virtual Lanier National Speedway
BRASELTON, GA — May 20, 2020 — On any other day of the week, Kevin Dedmon is the lead singer and fiddler of his own country band, but on Wednesday night at virtual Lanier National Speedway, the Dirty Grass Soul frontman laid a serious licking on the DIRTcar Street Stock field to win his first DIRTcar eSports Showdown.
Beating out fellow iRacing pro Kendal Tucker and DIRTcar Street Stock regular DJ Kilanowski, Dedmon took his Team VLR #0 to Victory Lane as the fourth different winner in as many races on the DIRTcar eSports circuit.
“This was my first-ever DIRTcar race,” Dedmon said. “I had a blast, and got to sweep the night, so it was fun.”
Indeed, he did. Dedmon was also the victor in the Hoosier Racing Tire Preliminary Round #1 COMP Cams Feature, which transferred him into the VP Racing Fuels Final Round. With a third-place Racing Electronics Qualifying effort, Dedmon got a great start at the drop of the green and immediately began digging to the inside on leader Tucker.
For several of the opening laps in the 50-lap Chevy Performance Feature, Dedmon and Tucker rode side-by-side, lap-after-lap until Dedmon pulled a big slide job on Tucker on Lap 12, to swipe the lead away. Tucker came back at him on the next restart, putting the pressure on Dedmon from behind. In their side-by-side battles, a bit of scraping and rubbing was seen, but nothing extreme. Just enough to turn the heat up early on.
“It was awesome, me and Kendal were beatin’ and bangin’ doors there in the first half of the race,” Dedmon told DIRTVision broadcast host Chase Raudman in the post-race interview. “It was all clean racing, in my opinion. He got into me a little bit and I got into him a little bit, but that’s kinda what you gotta do in these. I wasn’t holding anything against him for that.”
“I really would have liked to have gotten a better start and got out front,” Tucker said. “Probably could’ve just used the old mirror and held ’em off, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.”
A few yellows thrown intermittently from that point on broke the competitive tension between Dedmon and Tucker, but Dedmon did seem to have a better line in the long run, which gave him the advantage he needed to stay out front of Tucker and a hard-pressing Kilanowski as the laps clicked off.
Tucker and Kilanowski chased Dedmon down through the closing laps, where they got their best chance to make a move on the leader. With seven laps left on the board, the leaders caught the rear of a lapped car out of Turn 4. Dedmon just barely tapped the driver-side door of the slower car while passing on the inside, while Tucker made a bit more significant contact, cutting into his momentum just enough to allow Dedmon to open up the gap and drive away with the win.
“I pinched one of the lapped cars off pretty good, and actually got him with my right-rear. I was running that kinda slider-line out of Turns 3-4 and coming in high, so I was like, ‘Man, I gotta go! Can’t be waiting,’” Dedmon said of his lane choice in the closing laps.
“I kept trying that line in Turns 3-4 that [Dedmon] was running,” Tucker said of his view from the cockpit. “Every time I went to that line, he was just yanking me so much harder. I don’t know how much harder I could have drove this thing, it’s only running about 60 miles an hour.”
This was Tucker’s third venture into the DIRTcar eSports world, and the third time he’s been seen up front without a win. In his mind, though, persistence is key.
“We’ve been up front in all of ‘em, just need some things to go our way. You need a lot of luck on this sim to win. As long as we can keep being up front, we’ll get one eventually,” Tucker said.
“I was kinda sitting back, waiting to see if they’d go two-wide and just pick the dominant lane and hopefully get up to second,” Kilanowski said. “Kendal was keeping the car wide enough that I couldn’t get to another lane to pass him. So, I was happy running third.”
The fifth round of DIRTcar eSports action continues in two weeks’ time; track and car class to be announced in the coming days. Catch all the action live on DIRTVision!
Weekly DIRTcar eSports Showdown RESULTS; May 20, 2020 at Lanier National Speedway