In his seven previous Oval Nationals final night starts, C.J. Leary had never managed a finish better than 13th. But all that changed on Saturday night. 

Full USAC Sprints at Perris Auto Speedway Results

Leary took over the lead with 24 laps remaining and mastered a rash of late-race restarts to capture the title at Perris Auto Speedway. It was a much-needed win for the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship point leader in a myriad of ways. 

For one, almost inconceivably, it had been nearly nine months and 29 races since his most recent USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car victory. Saturday’s win at Perris came in the third race from the conclusion of the series campaign. Coincidentally, Leary’s first win of the season came in the third race of the year in Ocala, Florida. 

Secondly, it provided a boon to a team in the midst of a close championship battle where every position means everything. Leary took care of that. He earned the max amount of points with the win, and gained 12 points onTyler Courtney, who sits in second place, in the title pursuit. Leary is now 44 points up with two races remaining on the docket.

Leary has experienced victory lane on Oval Nationals weekend before, however, that came during the 360 sprint portion in 2014. So this one is special. Especially when considering how close he has come to notching a first 410 win at The PAS since 2014.

Full USAC Sprints at Perris Auto Speedway Results

“Man, this is awesome,” Leary exclaimed.  “This race, I feel like, has escaped me three or four times in the past.  I got the 360 Oval Nationals deal done a long time ago, but this definitely takes the cake.  The white eagle is my favorite trophy to win.”

Earlier in the evening, Leary captured victory in the six lap, six-car Super Six dash to claim the pole position for the 40-lap main event. However, Chase Stockon ripped the top of turns one and two to take the lead on the opening circuit. And he remained there for the first 16 trips around the ½-mile. That was until Leary utilized a drive off the bottom of turn two to grab the lead from Stockon on lap 17.

Leary opened up a three-car-length advantage over Stockon, who was now involved in a tussle for second with Courtney, as well as Brady Bacon and Chris Windom all under a proverbial blanket. Courtney dipped into turn three underneath Stockon to gain the second spot on the 23^rd go-around and set forth toward Leary.

Leary and Courtney, who swapped the lead between them four times in last year’s Oval Nationals final night feature, resumed their wrestling match in traffic for the top spot. On the 26^th lap, Courtney almost parked it as he closed abruptly on Leary’s tail tank at the entrance of turn three. Courtney slid sideways above the cushion, losing the 2^nd and 3^rd positions in the ensuing two laps to Stockon, then Bacon.

Full USAC Sprints at Perris Auto Speedway Results

Thursday and Friday Perris winner Bacon was suddenly the man on the move as he began to track down Stockon for the second position until lap 29 when, unrelatedly, Max Adams came to a stop in turn two, necessitating a yellow flag. As Stockon slowed for the yellow, the trailing Bacon ramped over Stockon’s left rear wheel and slid backwards to a stop without making wall contact. However, his bid for an Oval Nationals sweep was denied.  He restarted from the tail, and eventually, worked his way back to a 12^th place result at the checkered.

Down the stretch, several cautions wreaked havoc on Leary’s flow with a flat right rear on teammate Logan Seavey’s ride on lap 31, an Austin Liggett turn four flip on the 35^th lap, a Justin Grant turn four spin on lap 37 and a debris caution for the exodus of bodywork on the nose of Damion Gardner’s silver bullet.  However, each time a stoppage occurred, Leary was superb on the restart, jaunting out to a three to four car length advantage each time, which no other seemed to have an answer for.

Chris Windom had worked his way underneath Stockon on the 33^rd lap to get into contention with Leary, yet had to contend with preserving his second spot from the onslaught of attacks from both Stockon and Gardner in the waning laps, which went all to Leary’s benefit as he closed out his ninth career series victory with a 1.624 second interval over Windom, Gardner, Stockon and Courtney.

Leary’s ninth USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car victory tied him with Mario Andretti, Hunter Schuerenberg and Robbie Stanley for 51^st on the all-time series win list while also supplying Davey Jones with his sixth career Oval Nationals feature score as a crew chief.

“I never really thought we would’ve just run the bottom the whole time, but figured we’d make the switch to the top and I just kept pulling away.  Davey was giving some good hand signals from the trailer,” Leary recalled.  “He and I put a lot of time into these racecars and to come out here and win this one is (sweet).”

A roller coaster Oval Nationals for Windom (Canton, Ill.) saw him finishing 2^nd twice this weekend following Thursday and Saturday’s runner-up results while a 25^th place run is sandwiched between the two nights that wound up with a seemingly successful, yet bittersweet night for the 2010 Oval Nationals winner.

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“We’re definitely happy, but it’s a little frustrating,” Windom admitted.  “I feel like we run second or third every year and have some sort of issue that puts us starting in the fourth or fifth row.  Overall, we’ve overcame a lot in the last 24 hours.  Everybody on this team has done a phenomenal job all weekend to get us here.”

“I didn’t have anything for C.J., obviously, at the end,” Windom added.  “I felt like I did in the middle part of the race when I was passing guys.  One of those late race cautions, I don’t know if our right rear tire sealed over or what happened for sure, but I had no grip to the center of the corner anymore and he could just pull through three and four so much better.  I just couldn’t get there.”

Three-time Oval Nationals victor Damion Gardner (Concord, Calif.) came away with a third-place run, continuing his streak of top-ten finishes on Saturday night of the event to 11 years running that came one night after an uncharacteristic early race incident took him out of contention while running second.

“It’s points, it’s winning the Oval Nationals, all the cautions and running out of fuel is always a concern, then the hood blew off.  I was really worried that would be the two laps I needed to finish the race,” Gardner said.  “Last year, we literally sputtered to the checkered and that was a lot of drama there, so I was worried about that.”

“We were just really good the whole race,” Gardner continued.  “It was kind of tacky early, but at the end, we were really making ground.  I got hung up behind a couple guys at the beginning and they were just kind of all over and it took me awhile to break free.  Once I broke free, I ran those guys down from pretty far back.  I knew they would be tough, there were five of them, so I just had to be patient, but that was all I had, that was it, I gave it all I had.  I just didn’t need the cautions at the end.”