KOKOMO, Ind. — In essence, Saturday night’s 40-lap Elliott’s Custom Trailers & Carts Smackdown X feature at Indiana’s Kokomo Speedway came down to a two-lap conquest for Justin Grant.
The race boiled down to a green-white-checkered finish pitting Grant against Tanner Thorson with $15,000 on the line.
Race leader Grant answered Thorson’s slide job in turn one by returning the favor in turn three, then fending Thorson off on the final circuit to claim his second career Smackdown victory (2018), making him the third multi-time winner in the event’s history (Dave Darland and Tyler Courtney) in his TOPP Motorsports/NOS Energy Drink – MPV Express – TOPP Industries/Maxim/Kistler Chevy.
“Smackdown comes down to late-race restarts like this a lot,” Grant explained. “You never know that you have it. Even when it’s green and going well, these guys are so good, and everyone that we race with is so tough and so savvy at what they do. It’s easy to get snookered on a restart; you got to do your job as good as you can.”
TOPP Motorsports became the second three-time Smackdown winning team following previous scores with Tyler Courtney in 2017 and Grant in ’18. Phillips Motorsports also won three-straight with Dave Darland in 2013-’15.
“I was smashing this thing off the fence all the way around,” Grant recalled. “I about crashed coming to the checkered. It’s hot. I’m out of breath. That was 40 laps of everything this car had.”
The race belonged to Thorson for the first 15 revolutions, holding a lead upwards of a full second until he became trapped in a box between the cars of Matt Westfall and Stevie Sussex at the tail end of the lead lap on the bottom of turn one. That halted Thorson’s progress momentarily and gave Grant the go-ahead to levy a full-on attack.
Grant ducked under Westfall midway down the back straight, then tossed his car all the way from the bottom of turn three to the top of turn four, which screamed right past the front bumper of Thorson, who turned down and answered the bell to edge Grant at the stripe by a whisker.
Reloaded and ready to fire again, Grant made a beeline to the bottom of turn one and stuck the slider in turn two to secure the lead with 24 laps still remaining. With Grant upping his lead to more than two seconds, much seemed to be relatively well in hand. However, the car of Scotty Weir nearly spun in front of him in turns one and two, hampering Grant’s progress, undotting his i’s and uncrossing his t’s as his advantage melted to just a single second in the blink of an eye.
With two to go, Shane Cottle slowed dramatically with a ball of flame and smoke emanating from his ride, putting an end to his evening and setting up one final restart.
Grant was an up-close and personal witness to Thorson snagging the lead away from him on the lap 29 restart in turn one. Grant took it right back in turn three, rising right up to the outside wall in the fourth turn and giving it a kiss with the right rear.
Taking the white flag, Grant slid himself from the middle to the top in turns one and two in an attempt to stifle Thorson’s momentum.
“He was able to slide me there and I was afraid that was going to happen just with the moisture being low on the frontstretch, but I didn’t want to give up the speed down the back stretch,” Grant explained. “It worked out, and I was able to get him crossed back over and then just go on defense and block his sliders when he was throwing them to try to make momentum when he wasn’t.”
Thorson’s final charge came up short as Grant won by .773 seconds.
As the leaders crossed the finish line, a melee took place in the aftermath of the battle for the seventh spot which resulted in both C.J. Leary and Jake Swanson flipping through turns three and four. Kyle Cummins also became entangled and nosed into the turn-four wall.
Thorson ran through all three rounds of the brackets to claim the B & W Auto Mart King of the Hill title, then finished as the runner-up in the feature in his Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports machine, which garnered him The Frolic Bar & Grill Smackdown X Rookie of the Year award.
Thomas Jr. was the only driver to finish inside the top-three during both events held at Kokomo on Saturday, under the sun and under the moon, finishing third to close out the night cap in his KT Motorsports No. 9x.
To see full results, turn to the next page.