For most of Saturday night at Dominion Raceway, Mini Tyrrell ran third and watched. Two faster cars were racing each other for a win he couldn't reach, and the No. 81 just sat there, waiting for them to make a mistake. With five laps to go, they made it. They raced each other one corner too long, Tyrrell dove to the bottom, and he cleared a three-wide scramble for a lead he'd been chasing all night.
That is how you win the Mini's Mission Burn Rubber to Help Another 125. That is how Tyrrell did something nobody had done in ten CARS Late Model Stock Tour trips to this fast little Virginia bullring: he won it twice.
Let me tell you something about Dominion. Fourteen degrees of banking, the quickest track the CARS Tour runs all year, and a place that had handed the trophy to a different driver every single time the tour rolled in. Nine visits, nine winners. Until Saturday. Tyrrell already owned the 2025 edition. Now he owns the record too.
And he did it the hard way, which is the only way that counts here. Carson Brown, the rookie in the No. 5 Lee Pulliam Performance Chevrolet, put his car on the first pole of his career and led the first half of the race. Conner Jones, in the No. 44 Carroll Speedshop entry, ran him down on a long green-flag stretch and cleared him on the outside, the one lane nobody else could make work all day. A Fredericksburg driver, racing thirty minutes from home, out front and pulling away. Tyrrell sat third and watched it happen.
"I didn't think we had it," Tyrrell said afterward. "Carson and Conner were the two best cars. I thought we were equally as good, we just didn't have the track position on them. They got to racing down there in one and two, I saw my opportunity and just knew that was the only way I could win the race."
The opportunity was a restart with five to go. Three-wide into turn one, Tyrrell to the bottom, and when the dust cleared he had the lead off both Jones and Brenden "Butterbean" Queen. A lap later came the cruel part, and it belonged to Jones. Trying to chase the lead back, he got loose in turn one, spun, and collected Jared Fryar and Landon Huffman behind him. Red flag. The night Jones had coming to him ended against the wall, and he climbed out and declined to talk, which, honestly, who could blame him. Twice now in two weeks the Carroll Speedshop cars have had the speed and walked away with nothing.
The restart after the red flag was Tyrrell's whole season in eight seconds. He picked the bottom, fired off clean, and drove away from Queen, his Kaulig Racing truck teammate, who had spent the night dragging a wounded No. 03 Lee Pulliam Performance Dodge back to the front after kissing the wall on lap two. Queen settled for third. Parker Eatmon, in the No. 4 for Matt Piercy Racing, slipped through the late chaos to finish second, his second runner-up of the year and the second time a checkered flag has stayed just out of reach.
"Mini had a really good car," Eatmon said. "We finished second to Mini in Mini's Mission, so you can't be too mad about it. One step closer to the win." He gets his next crack in two weeks at South Boston.
Now. About that name on the side of the trophy.
Mini's Mission is Tyrrell's own charity, four years running as the title sponsor of this race, and it has raised more than $800,000 for childhood cancer since he started it. He named it for his childhood friend Ella, who beat her own diagnosis. This weekend each driver hosted a family touched by the disease, and Tyrrell's guest was a girl named Scout who has stood in his victory lane before.
"It means the world to me that everyone comes out here to support this mission, this race," Tyrrell said. "I'm so blessed to have Scout here with me. This is the strongest girl I know. She's so inspiring, and she has no idea. That's why we do this."
That is the part the box score will never show you. This was the fourth running of the Mini's Mission 125, and the garage treated it like the weekend it is. Brandon Pierce climbed into the No. 2 for the 113th time, passing Deke McCaskill for the most starts in CARS Tour history, and was named the first recipient of the Lincoln Hines Award, christened this year for a four-year-old the McCumbee Elliott Racing team lost to cancer last season. Chad McCumbee ran a missing-man pace lap in the No. 16 to open the show. And in a field that still carries Kyle Busch's memory in it, Donovan Strauss running a tribute scheme and Busch's number all season, Tyrrell climbed from the car and gave the crowd a rowdy bow.
A bow. For a guy who had to scrap and claw and steal this one.
"It's so much more satisfying because it was hard fought," he said. "Last year we led so many laps, had a dominant car and won the race. This year we really had to work for the win. I got my mojo back in me a little bit."
He needed it. Tyrrell only gets a handful of these now that he's a full-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver with Kaulig Racing, the seat he earned winning RAM's Race For The Seat. His first CARS start of 2026, back at Wake County, he led 95 laps and got turned out of the win and into a 21st-place finish. So no, he wasn't going to apologize for stealing the bottom lane on a restart. You take the door when it opens. That's short-track racing, and Tyrrell has been racing this place since he was a kid from Mineral, Virginia.
Five career CARS Tour wins now. Two of them here. The only man who has ever won twice at Dominion.
The tour goes dark for a month before it reconvenes July 17 at North Wilkesboro, the opening act for the first points-paying Cup race that crooked old place has hosted since 1996. Bigger stage, bigger noise. But Saturday belonged to Mineral, Virginia, a little girl named Scout, and a trophy nobody else has ever lifted twice.