Daison Pursley aims for one spot better in 2026 Chili Bowl

One year later, Daison Pursley is of mixed emotions about how the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals featured played out.

On one hand, he hung in there and finished second to Kyle Larson, but had the race been its usual 55 laps, he also believes there is a likelihood that it becomes a different story entirely.

“I don’t know,” Pursley said wistfully. “I think the track was just so hard and unique last year that if Larson makes one more mistake or if I make two more or less mistakes that it looks a little bit different.”

To his point, Pursley was completing a race winning pass on Larson in traffic when a debris caution waved. What was the debris caution for? Larson, under pressure, drilled the frontstretch wall and ripped down a banner.

The case could be made that Larson drew the caution but the race resumed with clean track ahead of the contenders. Pursley never got another shot in traffic and he’s thought about it a lot.

“I'm just racing on his bumper for, you know, more than one lap at a time,” Pursley said. “But, at the same time, the biggest thing for me is being here and putting myself in this position time and time again.

“I feel like you only get those opportunities to race for a Golden Driller every so often. So when the opportunity does present itself, you take advantage of it. Hopefully, I get the same opportunity on Saturday night and am a little more prepared for it.”

Famously, Pursley respects living in the moment and not taking them for granted because he was briefly paralyzed after a crash in a Midget in 2021. He fully recovered and is racing for the biggest wins in dirt track racing ahead of a season in which he will replace the great Brad Sweet in the iconic Kasey Kahne Racing 410 Sprint.

“That is a dream come true,” Pursley said. “Like, I grew up dreaming of racing in World of Outlaws and now a series like High Limit and I was always No. 9 because of my dad so to take that number there and to share it because it was Kasey’s number is so cool to me.

“I ran the same kind of swoosh he uses too because Kasey was my guy growing up. There is a lot of full circle moments to this. Like, Kasey called me to drive his car, right, so I feel super blessed and excited, nervous, anxious, all those things.”

Besides the obvious, why you?

“I ask myself that every day, right now, right,” Pursley said. “I have asked him that, ‘why the heck did you pick me’ and he says he has a passion for helping young drivers out, to give them the opportunities he had when he was younger too.”

But for right now, this week is all about the Tulsa Expo and being one spot better on Saturday, even if there was pride in his performance in 2025.

“I mean, any race car driver would tell you that second is not really great, because that means you could still be better,” Pursley said. “Really, the great ones still want to be better when they win races.

“So I’ve tried to adopt that mentality of wanting more and continued self-improvement. I owe that to people like Chad Boat and Kasey Kahne for putting me in their cars. The best way to say thank you is by going out and winning races for them.”