INDIANAPOLIS — Thomas Meseraull jumped to the lead right at the start of Thursday night’s 30-lap, A-Main feature for the 5th annual Driven 2 Save Lives BC39. He’d remain out front for all 30 laps en route to the preliminary night win and stamp his name into the 39-lap main event on Saturday night.

“(I) just picked up a win at IMS,” he said in jubilation. “How awesome is that?!”

Meseraull is after revenge for how last year’s race ended for which he had an intense battle lap after lap with Kyle Larson but saw him lose ground in the end after getting into the wall and coming home third. He was 19th and 24th in the previous 2 editions prior.

Meseraull has had 2 top 10 finishes in his last 3 races on the season but hasn’t had a top 5 though in his last 7. He has finished third twice this season though too. Now, he has a preliminary night win and has a great shot of victory on the quarter-mile dirt track tucked inside of Turn 3 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

He topped Taylor Reimer who made a last-ditch effort in Turn 4 to use a slide job to get by but wasn’t close enough to finish .529-seconds apart under the lights on Thursday.

“I honestly felt we were a little bit better than (Meseraull), but we just weren’t able to capitalize on his mistakes,” the driver of the No. 25k Keith Kunz w/Curb-Agajanian Toyota said. “I tried to do a Hail Mary at the end, but I knew we weren’t close enough to him.

“It’s just awesome to be racing inside Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Like, this is so cool.”

Reimer started in Row 2, directly behind Meseraull and followed him to the front at the drop of the green flag. She’d ride in tow behind him the whole way and will join him in clinching a spot to the main event.

So will third place finisher Chase McDermand. He started on the pole as the high points man of the heat and qualifying races. He went from 5th to 1st in his qualifying race which gave him the top starting spot for the feature. However, Meseraull and Reimer got a great launch at the start dropping McDermand down to third.

He’d stay there the rest of the way.

Jacob Denney got by the defending race winner, Buddy Kofoid coming to the white flag to finish fourth dropping Kofoid down to fifth in the end.

The race was stopped twice for incidents. The first coming on Lap 6 for second in points, Bryant Wiedeman having an incident in Turn 1. He’d continue on but only finished 12th.

The second came with 7 laps remaining when Kyle Jones spun off Meseraull’s bumper as T-Mez was trying to come through lapped traffic.

Meseraull led the field to green on the final restart and wouldn’t be caught.

10th, 11th and 13th in points are now locked in.