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."

"There for the last hour [of voting], somebody brought it to my attention, and then I kind of thought about it. I bet there were 15 or 20 lead changes. Stevie would be up by 15 or 20 votes, and I would either make another social media post or post something to a story. And here we would come back at 25 or 30. And I literally think that at 6:00, we were just on the right end of one of our upswings. I think another five minutes, and he would've probably been seven or eight votes ahead. It just happened. We just happened to hit it right.

Just to think, the friendly rivals have six more races to go. 

"I almost called Stevie yesterday and was like, 'dude, you can have the rest, the other six. I don't know if I can do that again."

Jackson, who challenged Barnett like no other competitor has this season, came up five votes short in a match that attracted almost 5,400 votes.

"Now that was a battle," Jackson exclaimed after a day of campaigning through multiple social media channels. "Forget our race, and look at the popularity of Pro Modified. This match should prove that Pro Modified is the king of entertainment both on and off the track. Many thanks to the fans who proved this point today."

Barnett believes that something as simple as a fan-vote drag race should send a clear message to the NHRA.

"I think it's cool, and I think it's awesome that we attracted that kind of attention," Barnett said. "What I really hope is that the NHRA paid attention to that. I hope that the powers that be and the people that matter, that decide that how much attention and how much publicity and how much exposure that the Pro Mod class gets, I hope that they saw that. 

"If they will allow personalities like Stevie and like myself, and like J.R. Gray, if they will allow us to be who we are, this is what they can get out of it. You're talking about what, 5,300 votes? That's between the two of us."

While Barnett rolled through the field this weekend, Funny Car racer Dale Creasy Jr. methodically worked his way through eliminations, reaching the finals and stopping No. 1 qualifier Paul Lee in the finals. Creasy stopped the undefeated point leader Tim Wilkerson en route to the finals. He also beat 16-time NHRA champion John Force in the first round. 

Creasy climbed into second place in the championship point standings with his first drag racing event win of any kind.

"I Just do what I do, and I love what I do," Creasy said. "Being a small team that's not out there a lot to have people voting for me is pretty special. I never thought I would win one because there are guys like Wilkerson who's got such a big fan base and to beat him was just, was something special. So that's pretty cool.

"I never expected this, to be honest. I believed it was just cool to qualify. And then, after I made the finals in the first race, I started paying attention and putting effort into it. Some of my guys are starting to see it, and they're texting me about it. So maybe we'll have something for them in the future."

Joining Barnett as the only other undefeated driver after three events, third-generation Top Fuel driver Krista Baldwin used a solid fan base to stop defending series champion T.J. Zizzo in the final round. 

Perennial Pro Stock Motorcycle favorite Steve Johnson picked up his second victory of the season, beating the only opponent he's faced in the finals of 2021 when he edged out Karen Stoffer. The last time the two met, the event ended in a dead tie in the season-opener and was decided in an overtime format.

Kenny Delco closed out the event by picking up his first win of the season, stopping No. 1 qualifier Rodger Brogdon in the final round.