Matt Brabham entered the Stadium Super Trucks‘ Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend with three wins at the street circuit. He left tied for the most there with five.
After Brabham claimed Race #1 on Saturday, he spoiled Myles Cheek‘s hopes of scoring his maiden victory by passing him on the penultimate lap of Sunday’s Race #2 to complete the weekend sweep. It is Brabham’s twenty-sixth win in SST and fifth at Long Beach, the latter tying him with Robby Gordon.
Cheek looked like the top driver for the day when he passed pole-sitter Bill Hynes on lap two and led nearly the entire race through both competition cautions. He successfully held off a charge from Gavin Harlien, whose move into turn one following the second yellow flag backfired and allowed Brabham to move into second.
However, Brabham found an opening with two laps to go and overtook him on the inside of turn seven.
“Not a great start to the weekend but those things happen. The way the points is structured, it doesn’t really matter. You can still go for the overall,” said Brabham, who was plagued by mechanical problems in qualifying on Friday. “I just knew I had to get both wins and the Continental truck was just unbelievably fast.
“It was so much fun racing all these guys. Myles Cheek, he was just awesome there. I was trying to strategise how I was going to do the end of the race, and once he took off, I was like, ‘I don’t think I have a strategy.’ I was just trying to keep up and figure out where I can even pass him because he was so good on the exits.”
While settling for second, Cheek still scored his first career podium to wrap up his return to the series on a strong note. He had last raced in SST at the 2017 Long Beach round.
Cheek finished seventh in Race #1, which he attributed to trying to get used to the truck after his long absence.
“I must have just been a little rusty yesterday or something, but it was definitely a lot nicer to get out, a little bit of clean air,” commented Cheek. “I was able to run my own race then I saw Matty, he started pushing on me. Matty’s so good. Gave him maybe a little too much room on the inside and he was able to put the nose in there. After that, I tried staying with him, running the same lines as he was.
“After the day yesterday, I’m stoked with the results that we’re having.”
On the other hand, Gordon revealed Cheek had approached him about a potential issue with his truck in the first race, only for Gordon to notice a driving style error that Cheek learned from after a video study session.
Gordon explained, “Just by studying a little bit and taking it in—not taking it as a negative, but taking it as a positive—shows he can go right back up on the podium with the same exact truck. We did nothing to that truck yesterday except for just having a little bit of driver explaining. Dirt racing and pavement racing are two different things.”
Like on Saturday, Harlien finished third. Race #1 runner-up Gordon fell short of the Sunday podium but the former finish and Cheek’s seventh were enough for him to join Brabham and Harlien on the overall weekend podium.
Gordon, the founder and intrepid leader of the series, stopped under green shortly before the first competition caution to use his truck to push one of the frontstretch ramps into its correct position. The ramp had gotten moved when Hynes was hit from behind by Robert Stout, causing the former to go up the ramp sideways with only his truck’s rear on it as; as Hynes hit the wall, the vehicle pushed the jump to the right. Gordon dodged the moving ramp and completed the ensuing lap before stopping to move it back into place.
The scheduled caution came out shortly after, meaning the action ultimately did not hurt him.
“It was more than slight contact,” Hynes told The Checkered Flag of the bump from Stout. “He hammered me off the first jump. His front bumper was locked on to my rear number and it dislodged right before the next jump causing me to go sideways. I had nowhere to go. I was a passenger at that point.”
Ryan Beat also exited the race after suffering an engine failure.
Race results
| Finish | Start | Number | Driver |
| 1 | 9 | 83 | Matt Brabham |
| 2 | 4 | 957 | Myles Cheek |
| 3 | 8 | 55 | Gavin Harlien |
| 4 | 10 | 7 | Robby Gordon |
| 5 | 7 | 77 | Max Gordon |
| 6 | 6 | 28 | Robert Stout |
| 7 | 3 | 50 | Trey Hernquist |
| 8 | 2 | 5 | Bruce Binnquist |
| 9 | 11 | 23 | David Bernstein |
| 10 | 12 | 69 | Joshua Thomas |
| 11 | 5 | 51 | Ryan Beat |
| 12 | 1 | 57 | Bill Hynes |
