CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — Only three weeks removed from a crash that destroyed a brand-new race car, Kyler Johnson is back in the hunt for his first American Sprint Car Series championship.
Johnson, 22, of Quinter, Kan., found needed momentum with the Series at Central Arizona Raceway last weekend with his first top-10 finish of the season on Saturday and a runner-up effort after leading several laps during Sunday’s main event.
But those efforts didn’t come without a little resilience, having to get acclimated to a car he’d raced only once before.
For the start of his 2026 campaign, Johnson and his family had put together a brand-new car, which they debuted in the season opener at Volusia Speedway Park in January. That car met a disastrous fate when Johnson hit the outside wall in Turns 1 and 2 during his heat race on Saturday, resulting in terminal damage to the car’s frame.
The team turned to their backup car, which had not yet been raced, and finished the weekend before setting sights on the Sonoran Clash at Central Arizona. With only one night of racing on the car, Johnson came to Casa Grande with the kind of speed and skill seen from veterans in mid-season form, matching his career-best series finish Sunday night.
“It’s good to pull the backup car down and be able to, basically, translate our speed from car-to-car,” Johnson said. “That just [shows] our efforts in the offseason of making both our cars identical. Everything’s just perfect on these things.”
Johnson began Sunday’s program by turning the fastest qualifying lap of all 34 entrants before crossing the finish line second in the Honest Abe Roofing Dash to grid him on the outside front row for the main event.
The green flag dropped, and while polesitter Justin Peck first looked to be the man to beat, a flat right-front tire dashed his chances for a repeat after winning Saturday and handed the lead over to Johnson with 13 laps complete.
Johnson led the field around for the next 10 laps, favoring the bottom lane around the three-eighths-mile oval. His closest competition, points leader Matt Covington, had been making his way to the front with great speed on the top side and was rapidly closing the gap to the leader. With only five laps left, Covington zoomed past Johnson to his outside and into the lead before driving off with the victory.
“Early in the race, I was able to keep pace with Peck,” Johnson said. “After that yellow, I thought like the top was kinda too dry. Whenever I was running up there in traffic, I just felt like I was losing ground. I guess the top came in there toward the end of the race.
“Once I moved up there, I was just locked down. Matt was able to find it before I did, and that’s kind of the end of the story there.”
Despite falling one spot short of his first American Sprint Car Series win, Johnson was still in good spirits after the race, knowing he and brother/Crew Chief Kahne Johnson’s efforts showed how capable they are of competing with the best in 360 sprint car racing and how close they might be to finally reaching victory lane.
“Any time you just have that one extra hand… [Kahne’s] really knowledgeable about setups,” Kyler said. “We’ve kinda got a whole new package going on this year compared to what we were doing last year, and we’re able to adjust on it the same way we had been. Definitely good to have speed early in the year, we’ve just gotta maintain it to have a fight at the championship here.”
