By T.J. Buffenbarger
ROSSBURG, OH (September 20, 2024) — The opening night of the 42nd 4-Crown Nationals at Eldora Speedway kicked off the the Be4theCrowns Showdown on Friday with a highly entertaining and efficient night of racing. Here are some takeaways from the opening night of 4-Crown weekend.
• Friday was a statement night for Daison Pursley throwing down the gauntlet for his fellow competitors for the remainder of the 4-Crown weekend. The most impressive aspect of Pursley’s performance on Friday was not necessarily what he accomplished, but how he went about doing it.
While Pursley is not doing work in the winged sprint car division on this trip to Eldora, it would be difficult to imagine a better scenario for anyone to start out the USAC Portion of the event than what Pursley accomplished on Friday.
In the USAC Silver Crown Series Pursley was visually fast from my vantage point without timing and scoring in hand at the time, even managing to bounce off Eldora’s turn one wall in practice with little to no harm done, still standing on the gas all the way through it.
That visual speed translated into numbers with Pursley winning the pole position. Cap that off with winning the USAC National Midget Car Series event from seventh starting position and picking up hard charger honors in the process is quite a start to the weekend.
The pass for the lead Pursley during the USAC National Midget Car feature during a restart with six laps to go, driving from third to first through turns one and two at Eldora followed by holding off slide job challenges from multiple drivers is the kind of performance at a 4-Crown Nationals that can elevate a driver’s profile among onlookers.
Pursley has not put his name on the list of 4-Crown winners yet, but Friday was a huge step in making that a possible reality in two divisions, which could be the kind of performance that makes drivers Eldora legends.
• Not often can you see the relief on a driver’s face when they end a losing streak, but it was quite evident how much Friday’s win during the High Limit Sprint Car Series portion of the Be4theCrowns Showdown meant to winner Justin Peck.
Not seeing a victory lane in 410 sprint car competition for over a year is rough on anyone, let alone someone racing to put food on the table night in and out. Peck has feasted on a steady diet of victories before going through this dry spell that started after his High Limit victory at Kokomo Speedway in August 2023.
There are a lot of race teams and drivers that would not have been able to stick out that kind of dry spell, keep the group together, and stay the course.
The key to Peck winning Friday’s feature was the vigor he drove through the slower traffic. During key points of the closing stages of the 25-lap feature Peck’s aggression in traffic built up enough distance that Rico Abreu could not make up ground once he found clean air over the final two circuits of the main event.
That and not having some of the misfortune Peck has found throughout the season, mechanical or otherwise, turn up at an inopportune time at Eldora.
With the High Limit Series winding down for the 2024 season, now it will be time to see if Peck and the Buch team can use their Friday victory at Eldora as a rallying point to ramble off another win or two before the end of the year.
• Sometimes the 4-Crown Nationals program can drag a bit just due to the sheer number of cars that need to be push started and on track incidents. Once holding preliminaries on a separate day (or days) and running a night of just B and A features as the finale to the event evolving into two solid days of racing for the USAC Midget and High Limit Sprint Car series causes some unique challenges.
At one point it looked like rain could interrupt Friday’s program, but thankfully the clouds split the Rossburg, Ohio area and kept Eldora Speedway high and dry.
Everyone at Eldora, USAC, and High Limit did a great job keeping that program moving with the last checkered flag flying at around 10:24 P.M. after qualifying three open wheel programs and full programs for two, all of which needed to be pushed off.
The drivers did their part as well putting on spectacular racing with relatively minor incidents sprinkled in the program. Hopefully that is a precursor to the type of action we should expect to see during Saturday’s 4-Crown Nationals finale.