Former series champion Blake Matjoulis earned his third win of the 2022 iRacing World of Outlaws ButtKicker Late Model Series on Monday night, taking the sixth round of the season at Kokomo Speedway. Once again, Matjoulis would come out on top ahead of his teammate Evan Seay, who continues to lead the championship standings by more than 40 points as the series passed its halfway point on the Indiana quarter mile.

Each of the top four drivers would win their respective heats, with Matjoulis, Zack McSwain, Dylan Yeager, and Seay securing the top four spots for the feature. But with such a short lap and ample opportunity to make contact, the preliminary rounds were anything but straightforward. 2020 series champion Hayden Cardwell and iRacing Off-Road Championship third place finisher Felix Roy went from both moving onto the feature in Heat 2 to dropping into the B Main after late contact in their heat took them both out of transfer spots. That race was even wilder, with Roy surviving early chaos to take the lead before running into a disabled car that ended his night early.

Matjoulis (127) and McSwain (25) racing for the lead. (Cole Baker Photo)

When the feature got going, McSwain would pull ahead for the first few laps, but Matjoulis would reclaim the spot and hold it for most of the race. He’d need to survive a 50-lap feature that was packed with cautions, including three yellows on back-to-back-to-back laps just after the halfway point. But after the last restart, an issue for Kendal Tucker in second gave Matjoulis the breathing room he needed to extend his lead to more than a second, before settling in for a .503-second margin of victory.

Seay would spend most of the night in third before finally climbing into second for good with 11 laps to go, giving up just three points of his 46-point advantage over Matjoulis. To do it, he’d have to pass Steven Wilson, winner of the high-attrition B Main; Wilson clawed his way from 18th on the grid to 14th in the first three laps, broke into the top 10 during the slate of stacked cautions, and spent the last 20 laps of the race in the top five.

iRacing World of Outlaws ButtKicker Late Model Series results from Kokomo Speedway were as follows:

Fin. St. No. Driver Laps Interval Led Best Pts.
1 1 127 Blake Matjoulis 50 0.000 43 12.536 78
2 4 33 Evan Seay 50 -0.503 0 12.472 75
3 18 10 Steven  Wilson 50 -1.529 0 12.617 66
4 8 41 Logan Rumsey2 50 -2.801 0 12.567 68
5 3 48 Dylan Yeager 50 -3.912 0 12.486 66
6 6 23 Chase Barbara 50 -3.937 0 12.606 62
7 5 00 Kendal Tucker 50 -4.836 0 12.523 59
8 9 12 Alex A Bergeron 50 -4.940 0 12.443 55
9 2 25 Zack McSwain 50 -5.529 3 12.575 54
10 17 21 Damian Kiefer 50 -5.758 0 12.695 47
11 13 2 Jesse Wall 50 -5.966 0 12.615 46
12 16 157 Drew Hopkins 50 -6.539 0 12.656 44
13 14 4 Justin Norwood 50 -7.077 0 12.586 42
14 7 19 Mike Augustine 50 -7.630 0 12.517 42
15 15 82 Dezmond Busby 50 -8.052 0 12.531 38
16 10 3 Barrett Bishop 50 -9.066 0 12.683 37
17 19 13 Travis StClair 50 -9.407 0 12.741 32
18 20 12 Ben Coutermarsh 50 -9.679 0 12.647 30
19 12 80 Dylan Wilson 50 -18.682 0 12.737 31
20 11 0 Christopher McGuire 49 -1 L 2 12.678 29

 

iRacing World of Outlaws ButtKicker Late Model Series points after six rounds are as follows:

  1. Evan Seay, 455
  2. Blake Matjoulis, 412
  3. Dylan Yeager, 372
  4. Kendal Tucker, 368
  5. Logan Rumsey, 353
  6. Dylan Wilson, 313
  7. Dezmond Busby, 278
  8. Damian Kiefer, 270
  9. Barrett Bishop, 263
  10. Mike Augustine, 238

The iRacing World of Outlaws ButtKicker Late Model Series season continues on Monday, September 12 at 9PM ET with a visit to Knoxville Raceway, after taking a break next week in observance of Labor Day. As always, the action can be streamed live across iRacing social media platforms and DIRTVision. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.