The USAC Silver Crown season will wrap up on Sunday evening in Springfield Illinois with the annual Bettenhausen 100 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.
Justin Grant, who currently owns a 22-point lead in the standings, is hoping to bring home his first ever USAC Silver Crown championship. Behind Grant in the points is the driver who’s streak that he is trying to disrupt.
Kody Swanson has won five of the past six Silver Crown titles including each of the last three in a row in runs with two different teams.
With the big names scheduled to compete this Sunday (5:00 p.m. CT FloRacing), and 12 drivers mathematically still alive in the points standings, the possibilities are basically endless.
The biggest incoming competitor for the weekend is actually looking for his second trip to victory lane with the series this season.
Outlaw dirt track star – at least for this summer – Kyle Larson will be in attendance for his second race on the tour’s season.
Larson won this year’s Hoosier Hundred at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and previously won on another mile-long track at Du Quoin.
A win this Sunday would make Larson just the 15th driver in USAC history to win at all three 1-mile tracks on the circuit. Other names to accomplish the same feat include A.J. Foyt, Jack Hewitt, J.J. Yeley, and the aforementioned Swanson.
World of Outlaws veteran David Gravel will also be joining the field this weekend, as he takes a few days off from his Jason Johnson Racing sprint car.
Gravel will be running in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series race on Saturday at Kansas Speedway before making the trek over Illinois to run with the USAC Silver tour on Sunday.
It will be Gravel’s debut in a Silver Crown car, but if it goes anything like the last few years have on dirt for the 2019 Knoxville Nationals champion, it’s going to be a fun show to watch.
Even the World of Outlaws Late Models Series Director Casey Shuman is joining the series for the Bettenhausen.
Shuman – a former USAC Silver Crown rookie of the year has previous top five and top 10 finishes on the 1-mile tracks the tour runs at.
He’s back behind the wheel of the famous Bateman Racing No. 55.
All of these names will be standing in between Grant, Swanson, and the rest of the top 12 in challenging for a championship.
With the amount of outsiders coming in, too, that could create quite the log jam in the results.
The winner of the race will be awarded 70 points, with second place getting 67 and the points awarded decreasing by three as they go down until P11.
The full points format: 1st-70 points, 2nd-67, 3rd-64, 4th-61, 5th-58, 6th-55, 7th-52, 8th-49, 9th-46, 10th-43, 11th-41, 12th-39, 13th-37, 14th-35, 15th-33, 16th-31, 17th-29, 18th-27, 19th-25, 20th-23, 21st-22, 22nd-21, 23rd-20, 24th-19, 25th-18, 26th-17, 27th-16, 28th-15, 29th-14, 30th on back-13
The only certainty that exists on Sunday is that Grant will walk home with the title if he can finish in the top 8.
Only time – 100 laps to be exact – will tell what these standings look like on Sunday, but if I’m sure of anything this race has the potential to be one of the best dirt track events of the entire 2020 season.
FloRacing has the broadcast on Sunday and full coverage of the Bettenhausen 100 can be found on all of our social media channels at @AlwaysRaceDay.
| USAC Silver Crown Point Standings | ||||
| Position | Driver | Points | Behind | |
| 1 | Justin Grant | 199 | -0 | |
| 2 | Kody Swanson | 177 | -22 | |
| 3 | Kyle Robbins | 167 | -32 | |
| 4 | Matt Goodnight | 167 | -32 | |
| 5 | Chris Windom | 166 | -33 | |
| 6 | Shane Cottle | 163 | -36 | |
| 7 | Aaron Pierce | 151 | -48 | |
| 8 | Mike Haggenbottom | 149 | -50 | |
| 9 | C.J. Leary | 143 | -56 | |
| 10 | Bryan Gossel | 136 | -63 | |
| 11 | Bobby Santos | 131 | -68 | |
| 12 | Patrick Lawson | 124 | -75 | |