Cody Porter picks up two wins this week, one in the Sportsman Truck Series and one in the rain-delayed Circuit Cup Series race in Nashville. Thomas Villano finds his third win of the ARCA season at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway.
Crown Jewel started off the weekend out in Bakersfield, California. A small crowd showed up following the real-life Cup Series Nashville race – seven drivers took to the high banks of Kern County Raceway. Robert Fraley took his first career pole with a qualifying time of 20.286s and lead the field to green. Robert would also bring out the first caution of the race, spinning from the front of the field and collecting Cory Mott. At this point, the race became the Thomas Villano show. Thomas would take the lead and lead 128 laps before claiming his third victory of the season. Villano currently leads the standings by 21 points over Jim Mott heading into Auto Club this upcoming week.
Monday night saw the Sportsman Truck Series returning to action for the Split #2 finale at Nashville Super Speedway. Zack Saunders took the pole with a qualifying time of 30.079s and lead the field to green for 150 laps around the 1.33-mile oval. Saunders would only lead 17 laps however, along with his teammate Mike Burnett – who would go on to win both stages in the race. In the closing laps however, Cody Porter would make his move to the front of the field and lead the field to the checkered flag for his first career win within the Crown Jewel Community.
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As this was the Split #2 finale, three more drivers locked themselves into the Sportsman Truck Series playoffs – John Connor, Cory Mott, and Henry Kallhoff. These three drivers will join Mike Burnett, Zack Saunders, and Nishil Condoor in the playoffs later this season. Split #3 will provide the last 6 playoff spots – three coming from the Split #3 standings, and three coming from the full-season wild card standings. For the current playoff situation, make sure to visit the Sportsman Truck Series Playoff page for a full breakdown.
Disaster struck on Wednesday night. At approximately 7:30 PM EST, iRacing experienced an outage that created a ripple effect, tanking server performance. Circuit Cup Series officials decided to delay the race – a “weather delay” was put on the stream, and server performance was monitored. One final attempt to create the league session occurred at 10:00 PM EST, and it was successful – the race was on.
I set up for the long run – I worked with Oskar Jensen to get the setup dialed in for the long run. Firing off, we were not good – really had to drive our balls off. But towards the end we were mowing them down left and right!
Cody Porter, #04 Money Shift Racing Ford Mustang Darkhorse
After a two-hour and eighteen-minute delay, Thomas Wolfe led the field to green after qualifying with a time of 30.379s. Two quick cautions struck as cars tangled in the middle and back of the field. A 30-lap run ensued where Thomas Wolfe would find himself out front when a caution struck at lap 41 – ending the stage. Stage two saw much of the same dominance from Wolfe, where he would lead every single lap in the stage and win. Backroad Bandit teammate Kristopher Burnham would put up a fight in stage three, leading 51 laps before falling back to Wolfe. However, from the middle of the pack came a surging Cody Porter, taking the lead with just nine laps left in the race. Cody Porter would go on to win the race and sweep the week at Nashville Super Speedway.
