KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Sometimes it’s hard to put a finger on what separates winning from losing, or good luck from bad.
But when the situation feels right and a driver feels supreme confidence, a transformation occurs. In racing, that includes the car.
Lone Jack, Mo., driver Jack Wagner felt that in 2026, and it led to his best season ever in a non-winged sprint car. Driving the Jesse Hockett/Wagner Boys Racing No. 77, affectionately known as “The Crow,” Wagner won the USAC Wholesale Batteries Midwest Racing Association Sprint Car championship.
With seven victories, four second-place finishes and a fifth-place finish in 12 series starts, he beat Chase Howard by 125 points.
In his previous five seasons from 2021 through 2025, Wagner won the 2021 Weld Memorial and the 2023 POWRi WAR championship, and was runner-up in the 2025 MWRA vs. WAR Challenge Series. He won eight races in those five seasons combined, compared with 10 across all divisions in 2026.
Wagner led all drivers with 172 laps led and six heat race wins. He added three feature wins at Valley Speedway in Grain Valley, Mo., in June, August and October, and a pair of victories at Electric City Speedway in Butler, Mo., in May and July. He also picked up July wins at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., and I-35 Speedway in Winston, Mo.
“The Crow” is a 2016 Maxim “Big Max” that its original race team looked down on after it was ordered, and that another Missouri team later gave up on after its repairs. By the winter of 2020, it had ended up with Wagner.
Since then, he has damaged it several times, and people have told him to get rid of it. “Every time I fix it, the car comes back faster,” Wagner explained. Maxim added another front clip over the winter of 2024, which is very rare in the age of the throwaway car.
Wagner took advice from Casey Shuman years ago. “In racing, it’s whatever makes you feel like Superman. The Crow makes me feel like Superman,” Wagner said. “To those who have doubted me keeping and racing this car, I say, ‘let them eat crow.’”
