CUMMINS COMETH! 2026 USAC AMSOIL NATIONAL SPRINTCAR REVIEW
2026 United States Auto Club (USAC) AMSOIL Sprintcar National Champion Kyle Cummins.
(Josh James Artwork Photo)
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Speedway, Indiana (October 28, 2026)………The 3333 points Kyle Cummins garnered in the final 2026 United States Auto Club (USAC) AMSOIL Sprintcar National Championship standings seems fitting for the Princeton, Indiana racer who’s run variations of the #3 on his car for nearly a quarter century of Sprintcar racing from the #3c to the #3R to the #3p.
In 2026, he piloted the Petty Performance Racing/Avanti Windows & Doors – JUGO Superfoods/Mach-1/Stanton Chevy No. 3p to a second straight series title on the strength of a career high 11 wins, 351 laps led, 35 top fives, and 45 top tens in 48 feature starts, all of which ranked number one throughout the season.
Across a historic two-year span, Cummins has accrued a pair of USAC National Sprintcar titles, 21 wins, 567 laps led, 73 top fives, 89 top tens, and 97 starts, all categories in which he ranks number one among all series drivers on his way to backing up his first crown in 2025, while earning around $289,000 in total prize money for the year.
“I think I’m more excited about this one than I was the first one,” Cummins revealed. “I was always saying that just one would be cool. You can have a lucky year and it felt like everything went our way last year. To come out this year and back it up, I don’t know if everything went our way, but we definitely had a really good season.”
Cummins was focused on a different approach this year. After getting a first title under his belt the previous year, Cummins was dialed in on winning races and letting everything else take care of itself as far as the points were concerned.
“This year, because I won the championship once, every race I go to, I wanted to win,” Cummins explained. “Last year, I got real nervous and I really started points racing. If I was second and third, I kind of just stayed there because I was like, ‘hey it’s going to be a good points night.’ This year, I didn’t care about that at all. I was just trying to win races and it seemed like, this year, it’s worked out pretty good in staying consistent. If you know the team behind me, they want me to push the entire time. That was the big stepping stone from last year to this year.”
Cummins and crew were also compelled to tinker and experiment with new setups and combinations, especially in the early part of the season leading up to the busy and grueling summer months, namely USAC Indiana Sprint Week.
“It was a season where we tried a bunch of stuff just trying to get better for the bigger races,” Cummins admitted. “It was kind of a fun back-and-forth season of just trying stuff. We tried things at all the tracks we went to before Indiana Sprint Week. We were always kind of doing like a test session mainly to get good for Sprint Week.”
The 2026 season for Cummins and PPR could be summed up by saying that this was a checkbox type of year. There were many items left on Cummins’ radar that he was all in on crossing off throughout the year.
He notched his first ever USAC win at the Terre Haute Action Track’s 1/2-mile during April’s Jim Hurtubise Classic, then returned in July to score the USAC Indiana Sprint Week round there at the Don Smith Classic. In May, he checked off his first USAC triumph at Eldora Speedway’s 1/2-mile during #LetsRaceTwo then came back to The Big E in September to corral the 4-Crown Nationals. Adding to it, he also reigned for the first time at Knoxville Raceway’s 1/2-mile during May’s Corn Belt Clash.
“I was excited at Terre Haute and thought that was cool, but then to come back again during Sprint Week, I was probably more excited than I had been in a long time to win twice there,” Cummins fondly recalled. “Then, Eldora during the 4-Crown, that was even more exciting because it might be luck to do it once, but if you do it twice, you’ve got a pretty good car there. To knock those off was pretty exciting, and then Knoxville. To win those races I wanted to win and then to win them twice, that was definitely a cherry on top of the season for me.”
You can also mix in an Eastern Storm championship and an Indiana Sprint Week title for Cummins in 2026, the latter of which was where most of the season’s groundwork was geared to by the team.
“Our goal was to win Sprint Week,” Cummins said without hesitation. “Then, to be able to knock that off the list, that was something that I hadn’t done. That week seems like it’s harder than the whole year. For the whole year, if you have a couple of bad weekends, you can have a weekend off where you can sit and analyze the car and go through it. If you’re off at Sprint Week, once you start off, it’s really hard to get back on when you’re going back to back to back. During that week, everything has to work out right and everything’s so tight because there’s only a few races.”
All of the aforementioned major wins and crowns were accomplished for the first time after so many years of trying. Five of them came on 1/2-miles after only having one total in his career entering the 2026 season. Getting good on the bigger tracks has been a key to Cummins’ championship seasons, and a portion of his skill set that he now excels at after previously trying to find his footing.
“To win a USAC championship, I feel like you’ve got to be good at the 3/8-miles,” Cummins noted. “You’ve got to be good at the quarters, but 3/8-mile tracks are the ones you’ve got to be good at. The 3/8 to 1/2-miles are where I kind of struggled. Now, I feel way more comfortable running a 1/2-mile racetrack and I feel that we’re going to finish in the top three or top five for sure. Having a really good car on the big tracks is super important.”
In 2026, Cummins also collected his second consecutive Larry Rice Classic victory at Bloomington Speedway in May, then was victorious in the Eastern Storm opener in June at Grandview Speedway. He picked up a second straight score at Butler Motor Speedway, followed by the Sprintacular at Lincoln Park Speedway. He won again at Lincoln Park in late July during Indiana Sprint Week as well as the opening night of Sprint Car Smackdown in August at Kokomo.
Along the way, Cummins garnered an all-time record of 45 consecutive top 10 finishes in USAC National Sprintcar competition, spanning from the second race of the year at Volusia to the second to last race on the schedule at Central Arizona Raceway. That completely obliterated the former record of 29-straight top tens set by Kevin Thomas Jr. just last year in 2025.
On the path to the title, there was little resistance, and the pressure to perform was a fraction of what it was just one year ago, admitting the title race didn’t even register on his radar until August. After taking the point lead in the eighth round of the season in early April, Cummins never lifted as he backed up his dream season with another dream season in 2026.
With team owner Jerry Petty, and core team members Cameron LaRose, Zach Fields, and Kasey DeRenzy, it’s been a dream come true the 39-year-old Cummins after one of the finest two-year runs in series history.
“It’s been two years of a dream season,” Cummins stated. “A lot teams put in a lot of effort, but my guys go the extra mile. It’s kind of what makes me want to get up on the wheel a little bit extra just to reward them a little bit.”
Despite the fulfillment of back to back dream seasons, it was announced shortly after the final race of the campaign that the Petty Performance Racing national team was shutting down and would not continue into 2027. Thus closing the curtain on one of the most successful combinations and eras in USAC National Sprint Car history, albeit a relatively brief one.
Thirteen (13) different drivers won feature events in 2026, tied for the most with the series since 2016: Kyle Cummins (11), Mitchel Moles (7), Justin Grant (6), Briggs Danner (5), Jake Swanson (5), Brady Bacon (3), Logan Seavey (3), Gavin Miller (2), Kevin Thomas Jr. (2), Robert Ballou (1), Cale Coons (1), Trey Osborne (1), and Chase Stockon (1).
Justin Grant took second in the standings behind Cummins. Grant earned six wins at Ocala, Red Hill, The Dirt Track at IMS, Lawrenceburg, Tri-State, and Kokomo. His Indiana Sprint Week win in July at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway put him in an elite group alongside AJ Foyt, Rich Vogler, Mel Kenyon, and Dave Darland as drivers who’ve accumulated 100 or more USAC national feature victories in their career. He also became the first driver to reach 70 career USAC National Sprintcar wins and also scored his sixth career Smackdown belt, and fourth in a row, in August at Kokomo.
Mitchel Moles tallied a third place points finish, his second consecutive top-three points placing. He earned a career best seven wins at Tri-State, Terre Haute, back to back nights at Red Hill, Big Diamond, Williams Grove, and Circle City. His seven wins were more than double his career total of five over his first four seasons with the series.
Jake Swanson equaled a career high by taking fourth place in the final points. He grabbed a career best five USAC National Sprint Car wins in 2026 at Volusia and Paragon, as well as three of the final five events of the year at Lawrenceburg’s Greg Staab Memorial, and twice at Central Arizona during the prelims of the Western World Championships.
Kevin Thomas Jr. changed teams midway through the season from Rock Steady Racing to BBI Motorsports. With BBI, he won twice, including the Indiana Sprint Week round at Kokomo and his record extending sixth Haubstadt Hustler at Tri-State, which made him just the fifth driver in series history to win 50 career races, while finishing fifth in points.
Briggs Danner equaled his career best with a sixth place points finish to go along with a career best five feature victories at Lawrenceburg, Circle City, and Bridgeport, where he got his first national win after recording his first ever sprint car start and win with USAC East Coast in 2020. He also added wins at Action Track USA and a second straight dub at Eldora.
C J Leary was seventh in points with 13 top fives and 26 top tens while driving for himself, the Fox Bros., Hunter Maddox, and Michael Motorsports. In February, he reached a milestone by making his 500th career USAC National Sprint Car feature start, and in May, he set a new USAC National Sprint Car ironman record with his 328th consecutive feature start.
Chase Stockon returned to victory lane on Friday the 13th in February at Ocala Speedway. It was his first win in the Sunshine State of Florida in eight years. Stockon also added 10 top fives, 25 top tens, and 40 laps led as the wheelman for Tom and Laurie Sertich’s No. 92. Stockon went on to finish 8th in the standings, his 14th top 10 points finish in 15 years.
Logan Seavey finished ninth in points but led the series standings for the first seven races of the year with early season victories in Florida at both Volusia and Ocala en route to the Winter Dirt Games championship. In September, he prevailed in the closest finish of the year by a 0.061 second margin over Kyle Cummins in USAC’s first trip to Lernerville in 15 years.
Robert Ballou became the 12th driver in USAC National Sprint Car history to reach the 40-win mark in July’s Indiana Sprint Week show at Bloomington. The victory came in dramatic fashion when Gavin Miller ran out of fuel on the final lap as Ballou raced by to pick up his only win of the USAC season, while rounding out the top 10 in the season points.
Veteran Brady Bacon moved past Dave Darland and into second place on the all-time USAC National Sprint Car win list in 2026 with a trio of scores at Eldora’s #LetsRaceTwo, Knoxville’s Corn Belt Clash, and Circle City, the latter of which was his sixth career Indiana Sprint Week win at six different tracks. He has now won a USAC Sprint Car race in 16-straight years.
Cale Coons earned USAC National Sprintcar Max Papis Innovations Rookie of the Year honors with a superb season in which he became a first time series winner. During a Smackdown prelim in August at Kokomo, the son of USAC career Triple Crown champion Jerry Coons Jr. became part of the 10th father/son duo to win a USAC National Sprint Car feature.
Coons was one of three drivers to win his first USAC National Sprintcar feature event in 2026 along with Trey Osborne and Gavin Miller. The 6’8” tall Osborne returned to Ocala and won at the place he suffered injuries at two years ago and did so with a quarter century old Mopar engine. Gavin Miller was a quick learner on the scene in 2026 as the true sprint car Rookie won twice, first at Amarillo’s Bomb City 40, then pocketed the biggest payday of the year with a $42,450 reward in the season finale Western World Championships at Central Arizona Raceway.
Furthermore, the largest car count in Indiana Sprint Week history of 71 greeted competitors at Lincoln Park Speedway in July. Justin Grant shared the series lead with Kyle Cummins by tallying 45 top 10 finishes, both of which broke the former record of 44 set by Cummins in 2025. Grant also grabbed the most fast qualifying times with 10. Cale Coons led all drivers with 16 heat race wins.
The biggest charge of the season was +18 by Cale Coons with a 25th to 7th run in July at the Bloomington Speedway round of Indiana Sprint Week.
Seven drivers started all 48 feature events: Kyle Cummins, Briggs Danner, Justin Grant, C.J. Leary, Mitchel Moles, Chase Stockon, and Jake Swanson. Ten drivers competed at every event with the aforementioned group, plus Kevin Thomas Jr., Logan Seavey, and Cale Coons.
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2026 USAC AMSOIL NATIONAL SPRINTCAR STAT LEADERS
Driver Champion: Kyle Cummins
Entrant Champion: Petty Performance Racing #3p
Most Feature Wins: 11-Kyle Cummins
Rookie of the Year: Cale Coons
Most Laps Led: 351-Kyle Cummins
Most Top Fives: 38-Kyle Cummins
Most Top-Tens: 45-Kyle Cummins & Justin Grant
Most Fast Qualifying Times: 10-Justin Grant
Most Heat Race Wins: 16-Cale Coons
Most Feature Starts: 48-Kyle Cummins, Briggs Danner, Justin Grant, C.J. Leary, Mitchel Moles, Chase Stockon & Jake Swanson
Biggest Charge of the Year: (+18) Jul 31: Bloomington Speedway – Cale Coons (25th to 7th)
Closest Finish of the Year: (0.061 Second) Sep 11: Lernerville Speedway – Logan Seavey over Kyle Cummins
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2026 USAC AMSOIL Sprintcar National Championship Driver Points
Pos. Pts. Driver, Hometown
1 3333 Kyle Cummins, Princeton, Indiana
2 3150 Justin Grant, Ione, California
3 3075 Mitchel Moles, Raisin City, California
4 2873 Jake Swanson, Anaheim, California
5 2657 Kevin Thomas Jr., Cullman, Alabama
6 2654 Briggs Danner, Allentown, Pennsylvania
7 2498 C.J. Leary, Greenfield, Indiana
8 2485 Chase Stockon, Fort Branch, Indiana
9 2446 Logan Seavey, Sutter, California
10 2341 Robert Ballou, Rocklin, California
11 2233 (R) Cale Coons, Greencastle, Indiana
12 1970 Hayden Reinbold, Gilbert, Arizona
13 1759 Brady Bacon, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
14 1567 Jadon Rogers, Worthington, Indiana
15 1188 Trey Osborne, Columbus, Ohio
16 1084 (R) Gavin Miller, Allentown, Pennsylvania
17 1067 Ricky Lewis, Oxnard, California
18 904 Gunnar Setser, Columbus, Indiana
19 833 Harley Burns, Brazil, Indiana
20 619 Stevie Sussex, Tempe, Arizona
21 609 Logan Calderwood, Goodyear, Arizona
22 564 (R) Troy Carey, Tullamore, New South Wales
23 527 (R) David Gasper, Goleta, California
24 506 Kobe Simpson, Bonham, Texas
25 422 Zack Pretorius, Yorktown, Indiana
26 412 (R) Jacob Denney, Galloway, Ohio
27 409 Todd Hobson, Clyde, Victoria
28 407 Chance Crum, Snohomish, Washington
29 399 Hunter Schuerenberg, Sikeston, Missouri
30 357 Brandon Mattox, Terre Haute, Indiana
31 327 Aric Gentry, Robards, Kentucky
32 278 Hunter Maddox, Bedford, Indiana
33 256 (R) Chelby Hinton, Dubberly, Louisiana
34 251 Jack Hoyer, Frankfort, Indiana
35 222 (R) Steven Snyder Jr., Rising Sun, Maryland
36 218 (R) Jakeb Boxell, Zanesville, Indiana
37 202 Saban Bibent, Cincinnati, Ohio
38 201 Tom Harris, Banbury, Oxfordshire
39 201 (R) Colin Parker, Martinsville, Indiana
40 174 (R) Austin Nigh, Greenfield, Indiana
41 145 (R) Ryan Harrison, Rothwell, Northamptonshire
42 96 Braxton Cummings, Bedford, Indiana
43 86 (R) Adam Taylor, Wheatfield, Indiana
44 85 Kyle Shipley, Phoenix, Arizona
45 80 Kent Schmidt, Owensville, Indiana
46 77 (R) Austin Cory, Morristown, Indiana
47 65 (R) Jason Cherry, Blandon, Pennsylvania
48 64 (R) Bryce Andrews, Kenosha, Wisconsin
49 59 (R) Cannon McIntosh, Bixby, Oklahoma
50 54 (R) Austin Hawkins, Sumner, Illinois
51 44 (R) Justin Zimmerman, Athens, Texas
52 42 Kale Drake, Collinsville, Oklahoma
53 30 (R) Landon Butler, Bushnell, Florida
54 20 (R) Hilton Rowett, Bordertown, South Australia
55 10 (R) Collin Ambrose, Owensboro, Kentucky
(R) represents a USAC National Sprint Car Rooki
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2026 USAC AMSOIL Sprintcar National Championship Entrant Points
Pos. Pts. Entrant, Team Location
1 3333 Petty Performance Racing, Litchfield Park, Arizona (#3p)
2 3150 TOPP Motorsports, Plymouth, Indiana (#4)
3 3075 Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports, Gilbert, Arizona (#19AZ)
4 2873 Daming Swanson Motorsports, Danville, Indiana (#5T)
5 2654 Hogue Racing Enterprises, Westampton, New Jersey (#39)
6 2485 Tom & Laurie Sertich, Princeton, Indiana (#92)
7 2480 Rock Steady Racing, Dupont, Indiana (#3R)
8 2446 Abacus Racing, Indianapolis, Indiana (#57)
9 2291 Ballou Motorsports, Tipton, Indiana (#12)
10 2231 Joe Dooling/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports, Freeport, Texas (#63)
11 1968 Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports, Gilbert, Arizona (#19)
12 1687 Chris Dyson Racing, Poughkeepsie, New York (#20)
13 1458 Jadon Rogers, Worthington, Indiana (#14)
14 1354 BBI Motorsports, Peoria, Arizona (#15)
15 1192 Fox Brothers-Brayden Fox Racing, West Lafayette, Indiana (#53)
16 1188 Trey Osborne Racing, Indianapolis, Indiana (#6T)
17 1094 Team AZ/Curb-Agajanian Racing, Phoenix, Arizona (#21AZ)
18 1082 C.J. Leary, Greenfield, Indiana (#30)
19 955 Ricky Lewis Motorsports, Camarillo, California (#41)
20 730 Britt Aero Racing, Brazil, Indiana (#16)
21 729 Rex Calderwood Racing, Goodyear, Arizona (#6)
22 647 Jason Setser, Columbus, Indiana (#G5)
23 624 CB Industries-Spire Motorsports, Mooresville, North Carolina (#87)
24 564 Troy Carey Motorsports, Tullamore, New South Wales (#45N)
25 525 2B Racing, Marion, Indiana (#2B)
26 496 Kevin Simpson, Bonham, Texas (#21K)
27 424 Epperson Racing, Camby, Indiana (#2E)
28 422 Jeff Pretorius, Yorktown, Indiana (#9z)
29 404 Tyler Sturgeon Racing, Camby, Indiana (#77s)
30 396 KO Motorsports, Owensville, Indiana (#5K)
31 376 Crum Racing, Mooresville, Indiana (#83c)
32 357 Brandon Mattox Racing, Brazil, Indiana (#28)
33 350
