By Richie Murray
Port Royal, Pennsylvania (June 21, 2025)………From wreckers to checkers. That’s how Daison Pursley’s Saturday night of USAC Silver Crown competition at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway could be succinctly, but accurately, summed up.
After timing in second fastest on his opening qualifying lap, Pursley stuffed his Chris Dyson Racing/Concord American Flagpole – High Performance Lubricants – Macri Concrete/Maxim/Ott Chevy into the turn two outside guardrail.
The damage was fairly extensive and the car subsequently required some diligent work to get the car ready for 50 laps on the 1/2-mile dirt oval for which the team had secured an outside front row starting spot.
When the night was complete, Pursley and the Dyson No. 9 had thoroughly dominated the event, leading all but the first two laps to capture both the driver and team’s first victory of the 2025 USAC Silver Crown season.
Furthermore, Pursley remained undefeated in a USAC Silver Crown car at Port Royal, winning his 2024 debut in dramatic fashion with a last lap, last turn pass of Justin Grant. This time around, Pursley disposed of Grant on lap three and never looked back.
Grant opened the evening with the 12th pole position of his USAC Silver Crown career, which ranks seventh all-time in series history. Grant then carried on to score the accompanying USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship feature held just before the Silver Crown race. Grant was vying to sweep both USAC main events by the time he rolled off for the Silver Crown feature from P1.
Instead, Pursley charged to the inside of Grant off the exit of turn four and nipped Grant at the stripe to lead lap three by a wheel. From there, Pursley’s lead steadily grew to more than a second by lap 10 and then to a full two seconds by lap 20 until 15th running Jimmy Light slowed with a mechanical issue on the back straight, which brought out the night’s first yellow flag.
Another fellow Pennsylvania native, 16th running Dave Berkheimer, spun backwards to a stop in turn two on the 23rd lap, which proved to be the final stoppage of the night, necessitating another restart in short order. Pursley was certainly wary of the looming restarts but was apt to play it cool rather than divert toward a defensive plan that could disrupt his rhythm and bring him nothing else but the blues.
“I didn’t really know where Justin was running and (my spotter) said I had a good lead, so I didn’t want to move around too much, but it’s so easy to go down there and pull a slider on somebody,” Pursley stated. “I figured one was coming eventually if we kept having restarts, but thankfully, we only had two. I feel like I got a pretty good launch off four to distance myself. It felt like the right thing to do was to continue to run where I wanted to run and that’s what felt comfortable to me.”
With the field bunched up momentarily, Pursley went the remainder of the distance clean and green with Grant giving chase and Mitchel Moles hustling under Jake Swanson on the back straight to slot into the top-three on lap 23. Two-time Port Royal Silver Crown winner Logan Seavey followed suit, as he was seemingly shot out of a cannon into fourth by Swanson on lap 29.
Despite all the shuffling within the top-five, none of it touched Pursley, whose lead had developed into a full-straightaway onslaught with less than 10 laps to go. Heavy lapped traffic loomed for Pursley in the waning stages. However, no challenge to his reign at The Speed Palace was forthcoming for Pursley on this night.
“At Port Royal Speedway, you know the top is going to be fast,” Pursley explained. “You want to get up there and hammer those guardrails and that’s what we were able to do. This thing was phenomenal. After the mishap in qualifying, (the crew) got the thing back together after I pushed the issue a little bit too hard. I just needed the track to widen out and I knew we would come to life. Sure enough, that’s what happened.”
Pursley’s commanding lead was top of mind, and it can certainly become risky to continue pushing when a substantial lead is at hand. But for Pursley, taking the foot off the proverbial throat at any point very well could have proven to be detrimental. But a healthy balance between both sides of the equation can be beneficial, and that’s where he stood on the situation as he put his competition in the distance and pounced through traffic.
“As a racecar driver, I feel like if you slow down, you just get out of the rhythm,” Pursley offered. “I was trying to pace myself a little bit to the best of my abilities, but I’m a racecar driver so of course I want to step on the throttle a little bit harder.”
Pursley’s winning margin was 3.541 seconds when all was said and done. Grant, who led the opening two circuits of the race, increased his championship point lead with a runner-up result. Mitchel Moles rolled to third while Logan Seavey took fourth and local Pennsylvania winged sprint car regular Chase Dietz rounded out the top-five.
Pennsylvania’s own Carmen Perigo picked off six in a 12th to sixth run in the feature, which netted him Rod End Supply Hard Charger honors. Perigo also earned hard charger accolades at Port Royal during the inaugural 2022 event at Port. In getting there, it was simply a case of Carmen Perigo doing Carmen Perigo things. When most others were running the top and bottom in unison, Perigo was rolling through the middle of no man’s land where nobody else seemingly ran or had success with.
USAC SILVER CROWN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: June 21, 2025 – Port Royal Speedway – Port Royal, Pennsylvania – 1/2-Mile Dirt Oval – USAC Eastern Blast
HONEST ABE ROOFING QUALIFYING: 1. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn-20.088; 2. Daison Pursley, 9, Dyson-20.218; 3. Jake Swanson, 6, Klatt-20.237; 4. Mitchel Moles, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-20.247; 5. Matt Westfall, 54, 4 Kings-20.315; 6. Logan Seavey, 22, Rice/Abacus-20.387; 7. C.J. Leary, 21, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi-20.429; 8. Chase Dietz, 86, Lee-20.456; 9. Alex Bright, 24, Haggenbottom-20.607; 10. Kyle Steffens, 8, Steffens-20.699; 11. Chase Stockon, 69, Pink 69-20.768; 12. Carmen Perigo, 52, Stehman-20.781; 13. Briggs Danner, 10, DMW-20.838; 14. Kyle Cummins, 20, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi-20.948; 15. Jimmy Light, 118, Thomas-20.957; 16. Brian Ruhlman, 49, Ruhlman-21.192; 17. Steve Gennetten, 3, Gennetten-21.276; 18. Dave Berkheimer, 31, Berkheimer-21.457; 19. Gregg Cory, 32, Williams/Cory-21.655; 20. Tom Savage, 38, Savage-22.205; 21. Mark Bitner, 4, Yeska-22.386; 22. Travis Mahoney, 65, SV-NT.
FEATURE: (50 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Daison Pursley (2), 2. Justin Grant (1), 3. Mitchel Moles (4), 4. Logan Seavey (6), 5. Chase Dietz (8), 6. Carmen Perigo (12), 7. Briggs Danner (13), 8. Matt Westfall (5), 9. C.J. Leary (7), 10. Jake Swanson (3), 11. Chase Stockon (11), 12. Kyle Steffens (10), 13. Alex Bright (9), 14. Brian Ruhlman (16), 15. Kyle Cummins (14), 16. Mark Bitner (18), 17. Gregg Cory (19), 18. Steve Gennetten (17), 19. Dave Berkheimer (20), 20. Tom Savage (22), 21. Travis Mahoney (21), 22. Jimmy Light (15). 24:08.168 (New Track Record)
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-2 Justin Grant, Laps 3-50 Daison Pursley.
USAC SILVER CROWN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Justin Grant-396, 2-C.J. Leary-328, 3-Matt Westfall-272, 4-Logan Seavey-244, 5-Kody Swanson-232, 6-Kyle Steffens-205, 7-Gregg Cory-205, 8-Dave Berkheimer-185, 9-Mario Clouser-178, 10-Kaylee Bryson-175.
USAC PARALLAX GROUP NATIONAL PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Kale Drake-135, 2-Briggs Danner-63, 3-C.J. Leary-58, 4-Robert Ballou-57, 5-Gunnar Setser-57, 6-Kyle Cummins-56, 7-Justin Grant-51, 8-Chase Stockon-50, 9-Jacob Denney-35, 10-Kevin Thomas Jr.-34.
NEXT USAC SILVER CROWN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: June 27, 2025 – Winchester Speedway – Winchester, Indiana – 1/2-Mile Paved Oval – 34th Rich Vogler Classic
CONTINGENCY AWARD WINNERS:
Dirt Draft Practice Fastest Driver: Daison Pursley (20.230)
Honest Abe Roofing / Allgaier Performance Fast Qualifier: Justin Grant (20.088)
Rod End Supply Hard Charger: Carmen Perigo (12th to 6th)
Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Race: Carmen Perigo