Pro Modified Lyle Barnett driver Lyle Barnett, competing in his first VRHRA fan-vote season, said after his first victory earlier this month that he wanted to win all nine races of the season. He remained on the course with a victory in Thursday's final round at the Red Line Oil SuperNationals.
However, unlike the first two races, this triumph was a battle to the last minute in a match with an equally polarizing figure - Stevie "Fast" Jackson. In a race characterized by the largest vote total of all the other professional categories combined, Barnett and Jackson energized their fan bases which spanned from the United States to the Middle East to Australia, including ten different countries.
"I woke up this morning and I'm like, 'man, I feel like I've either drank a whole bottle of liquor or been ran over by something," Barnett admitted. "Then I realized it's because I spent all day stressing, pacing, calling everybody I know, phoning friends, threatening people with their lives, like get on your phone and vote, do whatever you got to do. Send this to your family members. I don't know how much of Verizon's bandwidth we used up yesterday, but it was a lot. A lot."