TULSA, O.K.- Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Darlington Raceway. The Tulsa Expo Center.
What these three venues have in common is the seemingly animate character. A mind of their own, where you race the track and not others around you. And at the end of the day, they owe you nothing.
This even applies to hometown hero Daison Pursley, who caught every stray and bad break imaginable this year at the Expo. The 20-year old out of Locust Grove, Ok., less than an hour from the Expo Center in Tulsa, came oh-so-close to his first Golden Driller on Saturday (Jan. 18) night. But it ultimately wasn’t meant to be.
After a couple untimely yellows while running down race leader Kyle Larson, Pursley saw one final opportunity to pull the slider on the final restart. He took it, but came up just a little bit short, as Larson held off the charge in the closing laps for his third Chili Bowl triumph.
“Once Kyle gets in a rhythm it’s pretty hard to break it,” Pursley told Frontstretch post-race of his battle with Larson. “I felt like through [turns] 1 and 2 just to try to pressure him, and then I got off of 2 so good I was like oh crap, I’m gonna throw it again if he doesn’t slide himself.
“I thought I got through [turn] 3 really good on the bottom and started sliding across the middle and I’m like oh okay, this is probably clear. We’ll start racing here. And then once I almost got to the curb, he just drove around me. That was kind of all she wrote after that.”
Pursley made a costly mistake beginning the white flag lap that cost him a final shot to go for the win, forcing him to settle for his third runner-up finish of the week.
“Just came up a little too short,” Pursley added. “Running that hard of pace up there and a tricky track like that, when you make a mistake it is what it is. Unfortunately (I) made a mistake coming to the white, and that’s all she wrote.”
Along with a runner-up on Saturday, Pursley ran second to Christopher Bell in Monday’s (Jan. 13) Race of Champions and second to Emerson Axsom on his Wednesday (Jan. 15) prelim night.
Knowing it took Larson 13 years to win his first Driller, Pursley acknowledged that letting a race-winning opportunity slip away is frustrating. They’re hard to come by for anyone at the Expo.
“I mean most definitely,” Pursley admitted. “Hopefully it doesn’t take me 13 years. But (Larson)’s the best racecar driver of our generation. When it takes him 13 years, it just means this place is that hard to win.
“(It’s) frustrating. Exciting. So many mixed emotions to run second all the time. But like I said, hopefully I can knock that one off a little quicker than he did.”
There’s nothing quite like the Chili Bowl crowd in Tulsa and the fans certainly love their home state Okie’s. As a hometown driver, the fan support is massive for Pursley and after the journey he’s been on to get to this point, it’s something that holds a lot of value.
“I mean it’s huge,” Pursley said. “Like just to come here with all the support I feel like of any racing with what I went through, I think the racing community as a whole is huge. To come in here in an Oklahoma building and be an Oklahoma kid, it just puts a cherry on top of all that. It makes it even special to walk inside this building and of course we want to keep that little golden guy here in Oklahoma, we let it slip away this year.”
So, if he were to win one, would he celebrate with the rowdies? The answer is open-ended, but he sure hopes to find out.
“Who knows what I’ll do, honestly,” Pursley said. “Sometimes I get called an emotionless person for some of the wins I do and everything, but I don’t know, there’s no telling.
“I might burn the whole place down or something, there’s no telling. Hopefully that day comes soon enough and we can circle back to that question.”
Chase began working with Frontstretch in the spring of 2023 as a news writer, while also helping fill in for other columns as needed. Chase is now the main writer and reporter for Frontstretch.com's CARS Tour coverage, a role which began late in 2023. Aside from racing, some of Chase's other hobbies include time in the outdoors hunting and fishing, and keeping up with all things Philadelphia sports related.