It took around a dozen starts but Kyle Larson finally won a Sprint Car race in ‘The Great Southern Land’ and made it count with a $100,000 payout in the main event of the High Limit Invitational at the Perth Motorplex in Western Australia.
That’s around $61,000 in USD, both a decently impressive number even by American standards but also the largest prize in Australian Sprint Car competition.
“We had a great shot to win last night and I messed up,” Larson said, referencing walling the No. 1K while leading the second prelim night race.
That cost him an automatic entry into the main event’s pole dash but it didn’t matter because he started from the pole in Heat 1 and won that race anyway. He methodically raced his way through the top-5 and outdueled James McFadden, who swept both prelim nights, to earn the big check.
“I felt like I needed to rebound tonight and get these guys a win because they deserved it,” Larson said. “I’m happy about the performance this weekend, this week, I don’t even know what day of the week it is.”
Larson drove for Jason Pryde this week with some familiar faces on the team.
“Jason Pryde has great equipment,” Larson said. “A lot of fun to get here and run with him and get one of my best friends in Trevor Canales to crew chief it; he’s really familiar with everything we do at the 57. It wasn’t much getting used to everything here and that allowed us to be fast on the track.”
All McFadden could do was second guess.
“It’s hard to know where to go,” McFadden said. “That lap car drove back by me and it stuffed my whole momentum. I just kind of got out of rhythm, lost some a bit speed when it got rough on the top. I knew someone was going to be there in a bit.
“I just got super tight in the holes and I couldn’t carry the speed I had early in the race. Kyle got by me and the seas kind of parted a little bit and all the lap cars moved to the bottom and he had a lane to rip. At that point, he was gone and I couldn’t get back to him. It’s disappointing to have this kind of speed and not come away with it but at the same time, happy with our weekend and its nothing to hang our heads about.”
This event was the inaugural running of the non-points event oversees for the upstart series owned by Larson, Brad Sweet and FloRacing.
“Pretty epic for an inaugural event,” Sweet told FloRacing. “You never know when you have an idea, what it would be like when it comes to fruition. The fans really showed up. The racing was phenomenal all weekend. Perth really stepped up. They made all the elements feel bigger. Having Kyle win made it special for the fans. Anytime you can see Kyle race, that’s special. Kyle Larson doing Kyle Larson things. He put on a show. He won by three seconds.”
“The Australians showed up. James McFadden was good. Callum Williamson was good. There’s some rivalries building for next year.”
McFadden hopes to see the growth.
“To pay that sort of money is huge for us,” he said. “To have the forward vision of how good our sport is here, what we do and what the Motorplex is doing, putting the faith in us is a testament to those guys. To have Callum and two Aussies on the podium is unbelievable. Hopefully it puts us on the map some more. Hopefully more American fans visit and make this bigger every year because as you can see, this is as big as a lot of American races.”
Sweet said he wants to see the event grow in terms of participants too.
“We want to get more star power come down here and support this event,” Sweet said. “Carson Macedo and Rico had their things happen so there’s some star power we lost. We’d love to have some more Americans come down and compete. It’s a special event and venue.
“We want to keep building the purse, improve the things that were good, and fix the things that weren’t.”
The event will take place next year with a $110,000 winner’s prize.”