Pursley wins NASCAR K&N Pro Series West season opener

Greg Pursley looks like he has regained his championship form.
He won the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West season opener at Phoenix International Raceway. Pursley won the West Series championship in 2011, but was the runner-up to his Gene Price Motorsports teammate, 17-year-old Dylan Kwasniewski, last year.
Pursley has another teen-age teammate this year. Cameron Hayley, a 16-year-old from Canada, was second in the race at Phoenix.
Pursley led 56 laps in the Talking Stick Resort 60 and set the track record in qualifying.
Go to the K&N website for more on the West Series race from Phoenix.

Photo: Greg Pursley won the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West season opener at Phoenix International Raceway. It was the third West Series win of his NASCAR career at Phoenix. (Credit: Getty Images for NASCAR)

Pursley and Kwasniewski a 1-2 punch for Gene Price Motorsports

Gene Price Motorsports teammates Greg Pursley and Dylan Kwasniewski finished 1-2 in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at the Bullring in Las Vegas.
Pursley won the West Series race in Las Vegas for the second year in a row.
Kwasniewski won the pole and led the first 12 laps of the race. He maintained his lead in the West Series standings with his second-place finish.
Pursley won his second race of the season.
"It was a great race," Pursley said. "We had a really good car there and a really good battle there with Dylan. Our car, on a restart, wouldn't start going until about 10 laps in. We had a great battle with him there at the end. Kid's a great driver, but our car was
just a little bit better and had a little bit more at the end."
Go to the K&N website for more on the West Series race from Las Vegas.

Photo: Greg Pursley (26) and Dylan Kwasniewski gave Gene Price Motorsports a 1-2 finish in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Las Vegas. (Getty Images for NASCAR)

More from Greg Pursley's win at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale

Gene Price Motorsports teammates Greg Pursley and Dylan Kwasniewski posted podium finishes in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale.
For Pursley, it was his fifth win of the season and the eighth of his West Series career. It was also his first West Series win at Irwindale. He won the pole, led a race-high 164 laps and was barely challenged in the second half of the race.
Kwasniewski, the 16-year-old from Las Vegas, finished third.
Go to the K&N website for more on the West Series race at Irwindale.

Greg Pursley wins NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Irwindale

Greg Pursley has been tough to beat all year in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West. He was especially tough to beat at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale on Saturday night.
Pursley won the pole and the Southern California Toyota Dealers 200. He extended his lead in the West Series standings and won for the fifth time in seven races.
“When you’re on a roll like this, you gotta ride it as long as you can because everyone knows in racing it can end like that,” Pursley said.
In a way, Pursley, a driver for Gene Price Motorsports, finished what he started last year. He won the pole and led the first 41 laps of the West Series race at Irwindale in 2010. But he cut a tire and had to withdraw from the race.
Pursley made it through the race on Saturday night without incident to capture his eighth career West Series win.
“They give me an awesome car to drive and it makes it look easy,” Pursley said.
Pursley is one of the more successful drivers to come out of Irwindale. He won the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national championship in 2004 racing Super Late Models at Toyota Speedway.
Derek Thorn of Lakeport was second followed by rookie Dylan Kwasniewski of Las Vegas in third.
Michael Self led at the halfway point of the race on lap 101. The cars pitted for mandatory stops.
Jeff Peterson of Riverside won the NASCAR Super Trucks race, his first of the season. He missed the first three races of the year, but has finished no worse than third in his past four races.
Todd Cameron of Monrovia was second followed by RJ Johnson of Canyon Country in third. Johnson has won three NASCAR Super Late Model races at the track and is second in the Super Late Model standings. He won the Super Trucks championship at the track in 2009.
Ryan Partridge of Ranch Cucamonga, the leader in the Super Trucks standings and winner of the previous two races, was 19th and completed 32 of the 40 laps.
Devon Ostheimer of Morgan Hill won the S2 stock car race in only second start in the series. The 17-year-old Ostheimer races regularly in the Late Models and has five top-five and one runner-up finish. It was his first win at the track.
Andrew Anderson of Lancastrer, the leader in the S2 standings, was second, followed by Andrew Porter of La Verne in third.
Riki Rachtman, who once co-hosted “Loveline” on KROQ and “Headbangers Ball” on MTV, finished 10th in the 11-car field.

Pursley prepares for West Series opener

Greg Pursley is returning to the NASCAR West Series after a seven-year absence. He hasn’t raced a full season since 2005, when he was on the old Southwest Series.
Like many drivers, Pursley has not been able to secure any kind of sponsorship or funding to race regularly since the 2005 season. This coming the year after he won the NASCAR Weekly Racing Series national championship while racing at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale.

“The sponsors I had kind of went by the wayside,” Pursley said. “Sponsors are hard to come by at this point in time. I didn’t have the money to race on my own, so I did what I could. That’s when I started crew chiefing Mike Price and helping those guys out.”

Price was racing at Irwindale. His dad, Gene Price, got behind Pursley and will provide him with the funds and support to run the entire NASCAR Camping World Series West season, which starts Saturday night at Thunderhill Raceway in Kyle, Texas.
Gene Price Motorsports has four cars, two old Cup cars from Richard Childress Racing, one of the old Hendrick Motorsports cars from the NASCAR Busch Series and a road course car from Kevin Harvick Inc. The team was testing in Las Vegas at the Bullring last week in the Hendrick car in preparation for the West Series opener.
The team brought both Childress cars to the Toyota All-Star Showdown at Irwindale in January, but Pursley crashed in qualifying on a wet weekend of racing. Persistent rain washed out the first day of racing at the track and created slick conditions on the track.
“I had high hopes for that race,” Pursley said. “We tested a couple times and our car was really fast. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t run the car the night before when they had the practices. We didn’t want to get into any trouble or have the possibility of getting into a wreck. In actuality, I wish we almost would have ran it just to see how the car was.”
Thunderhill opens a 13-race season for the West Series. The West Series teams and drivers will race at Irwindale on July 4.
“Mentally, I’m kind of going into it as it’s a brand new season, a brand new series for me,” Pursley said. “I want to be smart about it. I want to finish top three this year. I don’t want to be wrecking cars and doing stupid stuff. We going to go into it with excellent equipment and Gene’s backing me 100 percent. We have a really good group of guys. I can’t wait to start.”