SARVER, Pa. – Kevin Swindell made it back to back World of Outlaws iRacing Invitational victories on Tuesday night with a dominant performance at the virtual Lernerville Speedway.
Swindell, who was victorious a week ago on FS1 at a simulated version of Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway, continued his run of success by leading 32 of 35 laps at the four-tenths-mile Lernerville oval.
The driver of the No. 39 Swindell SpeedLab entry edged ahead of Logan Seavey moments before a caution flag waved on lap four, then held off subsequent charges from Seavey and Tony Gualda during the remaining laps.
Seavey ran off the outside banking in turn two to end his chances on lap nine, while Gualda fought tooth-and-nail with Swindell in the second half before clipping the back of the No. 39 on approach to turn one with eight to go and ultimately flipping as a result of the contact.
“The restart (with 10 laps to go), I just didn’t get going very well,” Swindell said afterward of his battle with Gualda. “I ran at least a good entry to (turn) one and found some grip to get me back up next to him (Gualda) and I think he went to try and protect down the back and didn’t really know I was there. I maybe got lucky with him making a mistake there and not having to race him to the end.”
The issues for Gualda left Swindell home free following the final restart with four laps left. He raced away from Chase Briscoe and took the checkered flag in front by .606 seconds.
For his part, Briscoe believed he was close on speed compared to Swindell, but the circumstances didn’t line up quite right.
“At the end I felt like I was a little bit better than Tony (Gualda) before that last caution,” Briscoe said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pass Kevin running the same (bottom) line, so I tried to search around for some stuff. I just wasn’t as good. Ended up losing too much ground to Kevin trying to slide him at the end. Kevin has been really good in all of these races. I’m just glad to see someone other than Logan (Seavey) win one of these things.”
California’s Justyn Cox completed the podium, followed by Trent Ivey and Brett Michalski.
And while Swindell’s prior win at Knoxville one week ago was a joyous return to the top of the results sheet, he admitted that in this race, he was never quite as comfortable as he wanted to be despite ultimately coming out as the victor.
“It felt like I was running maybe quarter throttle the whole lap,” Swindell said of the virtual track conditions. “Not really in my comfort zone, but a lot of fun. Really enjoyed having to search and race. That’s probably been the most fun race we’ve had so far with no one line better than the other. You kind of had to go all over. It was a lot of fun.”
Troy Wagaman Jr. was the night’s hard charger after coming from the Last Chance Showdown and rolling from 22nd up to ninth.
In his World of Outlaws iRacing Invitational debut, NASCAR star William Byron transferred to the main event through his heat race and ran a solid feature to come home 15th.
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