Round three of the Monday Night Racing Pro Series went to James Bickford after a wild race at Watkins Glen International with the Pro 2 Trucks.
“I’m here to put on a show for the fans. I don’t know about you, but it was a great time for me,” said Bickford after describing how he got the job done, scoring his first career Monday Night Racing Pro Series win.
Bickford is a young racer in real life, having run some ARCA West Series Races a few years ago, performing fairly well and winning two races. Unfortunately, he has not been back in the series or any NASCAR series since his run back in 2014 and 2015. He is currently with Charlotte-Phoenix eSports.
Typically we see these cars (or trucks) used on off-road types of tracks. The one thing about them, though, is they are not easy to drive on pavement. These drivers were manhandling the trucks all race long, with tight battles throughout the entire field.
During our post-race discussion last week, we talked about the favorites going into tonight. We mentioned Shane Van Gisbergen, DJ Cummings, Brad Perez and Preston Pardus as the main guys to watch. Safe to say, those were all good bets with every one of those drivers running up front all race long. However, Bickford showed up, maybe unexpectedly, and had a stout race.
Van Gisbergen dominated most of this event and came home runner-up. Bickford made a move in the final run of the race, and even survived the bump n’ run in the final corner to hold onto the victory. The entire race saw hard battles from the lead all the way back to about sixth or seventh with Will Rodgers, Cummings, Pardus and many others.
Van Gisbergen, Rodgers, Perez and Pardus rounded out the top five finishers tonight.
The next race takes place next week on Monday, May 23, 2022 at Texas Motor Speedway with the Radicals. Coverage begins at 8 p.m. ET on Twitch.tv/PodiumeSports.
Brandon is a 22-year-old from NY and has been a passionate follower of motorsports for 14 years now. He recently graduated from Molloy College on Long Island with a BA in Communications. Working within NASCAR has been a dream for Brandon for a while, and he hopes to be able to live out the dream in the very near future.