SHEPHERD, Mon. — Seth Bergman enjoys his visits to Big Sky Speedway.
On the opening night of Frontier Speedweek with the American Sprint Car Series, Bergman used patience to secure his fourth win of the 2026 season in the Harvey Ostermiller Memorial, keeping his title hopes alive.
Bergman began the feature fourth as Kyler Johnson commanded the field from pole. While Johnson led the opening circuit, Matt Covington followed in second as Bergman worked around Jett Barnes on the cushion to take third.
Johnson continued to show the way as Covington and Bergman experimented with different lanes to close in on the lead. When lapped traffic affected Covington on the bottom lane, Bergman used the cushion advantage to take over second place on Lap 9.
On Lap 12, the race for the points lead took a massive swing as championship leader Sam Hafertepe Jr. lost control in Turns 1-2 and flipped his sprint car multiple times. While he climbed out of the car unscathed, he had to leave the night with a last-place finish.
On the restart, Johnson’s No. 45x got away with a one-second lead until lapped traffic reeled Bergman back into the mix, closing to within four car lengths in the final five laps. When Johnson was gridlocked with no room to create a buffer with three laps remaining, Bergman capitalized by reaching his back bumper, then threw a slide job into Turns 1-2 to snag the lead away from Johnson.
Through the final two laps, the Snohomish, Wash., native built a 1.5-second lead over Johnson for his 30th career ASCS National Tour victory.
“I was just trying to win the race,” Bergman said. “I really ran a race of curiosity the first part. It was gonna be tricky on the curb, so trying to figure it out early paid off. Utilized the bottom when I needed to, and man, what a night for our race team. Knoxville was horrendous for us. But through adversity and through losses, we don’t have nights like tonight. Right?
“You gotta use experience, but you still have to be on the razor’s edge. Kyler did everything right. No arrogance involved, if it was anyone else in that field behind him, he probably wins the race. I was gonna give it a really good effort, and I knew we were gonna have to get away from him and not follow him to try to win the race.”
Johnson drove home to a runner-up finish, and Ryder LaPlante took over third place from Covington in the final laps for his first podium of the season. Covington finished fourth, and Garrett Benson rounded out the top five.
With Hafertepe’s 22nd-place finish, he tumbled to third in the points standings – 19 points back. Taking the helm is Covington as Bergman leaped to second with a 14-point gap from the Glenpool, Okla., racer.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 23-Seth Bergman[4]; 2. 45X-Kyler Johnson[1]; 3. 88R-Ryder Laplante[5]; 4. 95-Matt Covington[2]; 5. 2B-Garrett Benson[10]; 6. 14-Jett Barnes[3]; 7. 2J-Zach Blurton[7]; 8. 3-Cole Schroeder[16]; 9. 81-Kelly Miller[14]; 10. 8M-Kade Morton[9]; 11. 88-Terry Easum[8]; 12. 88C-Brogan Carder[13]; 13. 24M-Ian Myers[20]; 14. 97-Sheldon Bender[17]; 15. 37-Trever Kirkland[12]; 16. 14B-Blayne Brink[19]; 17. 38B-Bryan Brown[21]; 18. 12H-Bryan Gossel[18]; 19. 0J-Damon McCune[15]; 20. 16G-Austyn Gossel[11]; 21. 511-Josh Broadbent[22]; 22. 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr[6]
