06/05/2026
RECAP: 2026 Nights 11-15 with Western PA Speedweek. Racing 5 nights in a row for the first time was very demanding. ad in the shop days preparing it was a long week.
Overall it was a great experience! The week started at Mercer, where i have laps in a 305 but only about 6 lap ever in a 410. It started off rough with qualifying toward bottom of our group, going for a gnarly ride in the heat but salvaged the night making the feature through the B, moving up each time we hit the track. For PPMS I qualified decent enough 13th overall but was .006 off 12th. 13th put us start 5th in the heat race, where qualifiying 12th we would have been on the pole. Nontheless we made the show through the heat startin P16 passing 6 cars to a P10 finish. This was the best I have ever felt at PPMS, with very little big track experience under my belt it felt good to move up. The next 2 nights were Lernerville and Sharon, the tracks I havehad the most laps at. With a P18 at Lernerville and not making the show at Sharon it felt like a set back. But with 40+ cars in the pits there was a lot of cars that didn't make the show. We were on the fence about night 5 at Tri City. We almost opted out of going, but sort of last minute figured to make the tow and see what we could do. Upon getting there we found out we were in the "money" for a top 10 finish for speedweek poins. and ended the night with a P12 feature finish going +3 in feature.
Overall we ended up 10th in points and tied for 6th in passing points for the week. Basically we passed cars or at least held our spot every time we hit the track. I know I need to do better in qualifying, so as to not put the team behind the 8 ball early.
Team 3J certainly wants to give a huge THANK YOU to Western PA Speedweek (Tyler, Todd, Greg, Kevin, and Gary). As you can see the true numbers of the week show the effort these guys have done to build something! The average car count was 33.8 cars per night. So almost 1/3 of the cars didn't make the show every night. We made 4 out of 5. We qualified and race most mid pack, but learned a lot. We are coming, Making my idols my rivals.
A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO MY LOYAL CREW AND THEIR FAMILIES, YOUR COMMITMENT AND SACRIFICE ARE APPRICAITED MORE THEN I CAN EXPRESS!
Some interesting numbers as we put a wrap on Speedweek 2026…
- 5th time that all five races were ran (‘92, ‘93, ‘94, ‘23, ‘26)
- Completed races #49, #50, #51, #52 and #53 in series history
- $124,775 total value distributed to drivers
- $103,050 in race winnings
- $13,500 in point money
- $8,225 in contingencies, awards and giveaways
- 33.8 average car count (34, 28, 36, 40, 31)
- Highest “410” count in the world on Fri/Sat
- Only “410” show to be run on Wed/Thu/Sun
- 6.2 average starting position of winner
- 4 of 5 winners started in 3rd row or deeper
- 62 different drivers competed
- 49 different drivers started a feature
- 25 different drivers scored a Top 10
- 24 different drivers made a redraw
- 16 different drivers ran all five nights
- 14 different drivers scored a Top 5
- 11 different drivers scored a Podium
- 9 different drivers led feature laps
- 4 different winners
- 1 first time series winner
