Much ado is made about perfect games in the fields of baseball and bowling. However, a perfect game of sorts applies to the world of USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car racing as well.

Watch 2019 USAC Sprints at Lawrenceburg Speedway LIVE

Like a pitcher throwing a complete game and a bowler rolling 12 straight strikes without a single pin left standing, a clean sweep with USAC involves setting fast time in qualifying, winning the first heat race, then going on to win the feature, all within a single night. That signifies the ultimate domination any driver can achieve in a night of racing outside of leading every lap. Yet, in USAC, work has to be done to reach wins in heats and features for the fast qualifier due to the inversion, leaving a driver only 8 or 10 laps in the heat and 30 in the feature to race to first from their sixth starting position.

Over the past 16 months of action, only one driver has been able to pull off the accomplishment and that's Tyler Courtney, who has done it three times over the last season-and-a-half, including last weekend at Eldora Speedway during the 4-Crown Nationals.

For Courtney (Indianapolis, Ind.), it was his third such sweep in that time period, all coming on three of the most famous half-mile dirt tracks in the USA, Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway (2018), Indiana’s Terre Haute Action Track (2019) and Ohio’s Eldora Speedway (2019), quickly moving him up the charts of drivers with the most sweeps during their USAC Sprint career – a feat that’s been done 113 times since 1961.

Now with three total sweeps in the series, Courtney has moved himself into a nine-way tie for third all-time. He stands behind the ultimate sweep king Rich Vogler (7). Other drivers who have done this include Parnelli Jones (6), Tom Bigelow, Larry Dickson (5), A.J. Foyt (5), Pancho Carter, Jack Hewitt, Jud Larson and Roger McCluskey (4) all of whom are inductees into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame.

Among the venues where sweeps have taken place the most, the high majority of them are on the big tracks, those a half-mile in length or longer where cars and drivers can stretch their legs and have the room and the time to maneuver around traffic.  Not to mention, all tracks within the top-five on the list have tenure, with roots that date back to the earliest years of USAC.

No single track comes close to Indiana’s Winchester Speedway in that regard with 21 sweeps, nearly one-fifth of all on the list.  Of the current venues on this year’s USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car schedule, Eldora is the leader in the clubhouse with 10 sweeps while Terre Haute has nine of its own.

Interestingly, 62 of the sweeps occurred in the first two decades of USAC’s National Sprint Car series between 1961 and 1979, nearly 55 percent of all that have ever happened.  Only 51 sweeps have happened in the four decades since beginning in 1980.

Theories can vary in that regard as to why.  The disparity in quality equipment among teams from top-to-bottom in those days may have been larger than it is now, with several displaying their ability throughout a schedule consisting solely of half-mile tracks both dirt and paved, making it seemingly easier for passing opportunities.

Watch 2019 USAC Sprints at Lawrenceburg Speedway LIVE

Once the schedule began implementing tracks shorter in length starting in 1981, sweeps became less prevalent and only 10 such sweeps have occurred on tracks less than a half-mile since that time, the most recent one happening in May of 2018 at the 3/8-mile Plymouth (Ind.) Speedway by Kevin Thomas, Jr. (Cullman, Ala.).

Thomas and Courtney, along with Brady Bacon (Knoxville 2011) and Dave Darland (2015 Eagle), are among the four active series drivers with a USAC Sprint sweep on their resume entering this Saturday’s Fall Nationals at Indiana’s Lawrenceburg Speedway where a sweep has been performed just once, by Jack Hewitt in 1995 on the former quarter-mile configuration there.  The series returns to the now 3/8-mile high-banked dirt oval this weekend.