Pro Modified racer Lyle Barnett was red-hot at the end of the 2021 NHRA Pro Modified season, winning the final two races. When the competition drifted over into the fan-vote realm of the Virtual Reality Hot Rod Association, Barnett merely picked up where he left off.
Barnett scored his seventh win of the season, stopping Mike Castellana at the Le GrandNational in Montreal and, in doing so, clinched the series title.
" I don't have to press the gas or the trans-brake button to let go of it on time, to guide that seat down through there," Barnett said. "But for a week at a time, I'm pecking the hell out of the screen of my phone, promoting it on social media, making videos. Stevie gave me a good run for my money there for about four weeks, and we were back and forth on social media. And it was really fun. But I think that ... I said it after; I think it was race three when Stevie and I went for a spread of five votes, decided in a race where you had over 6,000 votes cast.