INDIANAPOLIS — After the disappointment of not winning his second BC 39 in early July at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway dirt track, Justin Grant claimed the inaugural sprint car race win to kick off USAC’s 2025 Indiana Sprint Week on the fifth-mile oval on Thursday (July 24).
Grant started fifth and picked up the lead on Lap 20 of the 35-lap feature when polesitter Robert Ballou‘s engine started to lose power.
“I was able to kind of run up on the wall,” Grant said after the race. “I thought, ‘Okay, here we go, we’re going to have a shot at him,’ and was able to get a good run there down the front stretch and get him kind of pinned into [Turn] 1 in some lapped traffic and get by him and made a little contact with him. And then when you run into Robert, you better run like hell because he’s gonna try and run back into you!”
Seavey was able to get by Ballou before the next yellow flag for Ricky Lewis‘ spinning No. 41 machine and then the chase was on between the 2023 BC39 winner and the 2023 USAC Silver Crown Series champion.
Try as he might, Seavey could not get around Grant and finished nearly 1.5 seconds behind the California native.
“I had a few big runs on [Grant] and didn’t commit and then my one slider, I cleared him and I didn’t hit the wall hard enough really and get that launch off of [Turn] 2,” Seavey said. “Like it’s such such a famous run here off of [Turn] 2 where you kind of hit the wall and shoot down the back stretch when I slid him in [Turns] 1 and 2, you know, I was like, ‘Man, I got it, it’s no big deal,’ and I just didn’t quite get the wall good enough and he was able to cross me over which shouldn’t happen if I do my job right and then that was it.”
As for Ballou, he finished third but had the most entertaining night. His engine began smoking fiercely after falling back to third place but the 2015 USAC Sprint Car Series Champion was giving his car everything he had to maintain his position, having never received the black flag to leave the track.
“If they had a brain, they would have went around me,” Ballou said of the rest of the field who finished behind him. “I was on probably six cylinders, and that was all it had. I was wide open. I had to lift on entry and if I lifted too much, it wouldn’t leave the corner and if I ran in too hard, it would slide out of it, so it’s one of them deals.
“I was just thankful to run third and make a couple bucks to go back towards the cause because that’s probably gonna be a 15 or $20,000 rebuild.”
Indiana Sprint Week continues Friday night (July 25) at Lincoln Park Speedway for the first points-paying race of Indiana Sprint Week as the IMS dirt track event was an invitational event.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.