KUTZTOWN, Pa. — The 2026 edition of USAC Eastern Storm began with Briggs Danner and Kyle Cummins in the headlines. At the end of Sunday night’s series finale at Action Track USA, the same two drivers made news.
Danner took the lead for good with 25 laps remaining to cap off the week with a feature victory on the fifth-mile Kutztown, Pennsylvania dirt oval in his Hogue Racing Enterprises/E. Schneider & Sons – Keystone Cap/DRC/Rider Chevy No. 39.
Meanwhile, Cummins finished second to Danner to erase a 20-point deficit on the final evening of the five-race series to capture his first USAC Yokohama Tire Eastern Storm Presented by Levan Machine championship by a mere two points over Mitchel Moles.
Cummins’ triumph came one year after he finished the week with the same number of points as Justin Grant but lost out on the Eastern Storm title due to a tiebreaker.
“This is worth two feature wins tonight,” Cummins stated after pocketing the championship as well as $15,000 on the night. “Last year after tying and not winning because of the tiebreaker, that was a long trip home. Tonight, I’m going to take a shower and I’m just going to truck her on home. I’m pretty excited.”
During the first race of the 19th running of Eastern Storm on Tuesday at Grandview Speedway, Cummins and Danner banged wheels amid a battle for the lead with a little over a lap remaining. The resulting contact spun Danner while Cummins continued onward to win the race. Danner wound up finishing 16th and spent an entire week trying to dig himself out of a hole to get back into the championship race.
Danner finished off the week in much more pleasant circumstances to earn his third Eastern Storm feature victory, his second of the week, his fourth on the 2026 USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship season.
Action Track USA is a home away from home for Danner in his native Keystone State, located only a half-hour drive away from his Allentown, Pennsylvania home. He was a USAC SpeedSTR champion at the track in 2021, and over the years, has compiled numerous volumes of major wins there, including three USAC East Coast Sprint Car features. Safe to say, he has a fond familiarity of the place.
“Hometown racing on this kind of stage is a lot of fun and we enjoy it,” Danner exclaimed. “(Experience) plays a lot. With track work and stuff, the track changes every time you hit it, and with these cars on this small of a track, there are a lot of things that you’ve got to do to try to get it to rotate. Then, if it goes away, you’re really not good. It changed a lot there in the heat race and we figured we were really close. The curb getting into one and two was freaking huge. I actually started cheating it there. I don’t know if I had a tire going down or what, but after that restart, I just could not enter. I just felt down on the right rear, and the frame rails were dragging.”
Danner started from the pole but was initially beat to the punch by outside front row starter Ricky Lewis who led the initial circuit of the 40-lap feature.
Behind Danner, though, a major kerfuffle and shake-up occurred that began at the end of lap one when Charles Davis Jr. kicked up an infield tractor tire with his own left front tire at the exit of turn four.
Simultaneously, further ahead of the tractor tire incident, Eastern Storm point leader Mitchel Moles was, all of a sudden, stopped backward in between turns one and two. Moles appeared to offer his umbrage in the direction of Robert Ballou who he was running side-by-side with entering turn one. Moles was shuffled to the back of the 22-car field but was not quite finished.
Lewis led the initial lap after the ensuing restart before walloping the turn one wall on lap three, which dropped him back to fourth as Danner, Jake Swanson, and Cummins all shot by for first, second and third in the running order, respectively.
Danner paced the field for the next seven laps, but as is always the case at Action Track USA, lapped traffic was just a blink of an eye away at all times. As Danner attempted to navigate his way past Brett Rose, Swanson reeled Danner in, then dipped under Danner off turn two to take the top spot away on lap 10.
Danner remained on the chase over the next six laps, then executed his winning move by backing his car deep into the first turn on lap 16, rooster tailing the sky-blue wall with dirt before lasering down to the bottom of turn two to take over up front.
On the tight confines of Action Track USA, when you find the room to maneuver, it’s like hitting a barn door with a banjo. Very satisfying.
“It was pretty tough because you don’t really have many choices when you’ve got lapped traffic in front of you,” Danner explained. “You’ve just got to go where they’re not and try to make it happen. I knew Jake was pretty good and the bottom of one and two was a little bit better than three and four. I kind of showed him my nose in one and two there, and then he moved to the bottom on both ends, and I could get the top going in four and try to make it happen. That cushion was up on the wall, and it was pretty sketchy. I didn’t want to enter too hot on that. That’s for sure.”
The second major melee that had a direct impact on the Eastern Storm title race occurred on lap 19 when fourth running Justin Grant half-spun in turn four. Moments later, Bacon hit Grant and came to a stop, while also collecting Ballou, Chase Stockon and Olivia Thayer.
As they were running at the time of the accident, Bacon was leading the Eastern Storm standings. However, that door was immediately closed after his car was towed to the pits, out of the race with a 19th place result. Ballou, Stockon and Thayer, meanwhile, restarted at the tail.
For the second half of the race, it was all Danner who continually grew his lead and was up more than a second on the field with 10 laps remaining.
At the same time, Moles had carved his way up through the field to the ninth spot and had to be within five spots of Cummins to get the Eastern Storm crown. That said, Cummins gained himself a bit of elbow room on lap 30 when he scurried under Swanson in turns one and two to swipe the all-important runner-up spot.
Danner went unchallenged the rest of the way for a 0.748-second margin of victory over Cummins, who clinched the Eastern Storm title with a second-place finish. Swanson crossed the stripe in third with Grant fourth and Kevin Thomas Jr. rounding out the top five.
Moles grabbed one more position on the final lap to get to eighth in the final running order but took the checkered flag roughly four car lengths behind seventh-place finisher Steven Drevicki, putting Moles just two points one single on track position short of the Eastern Storm title.
USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship, Action Track USA, Kutztown, Pennsylvania, June 21, 2026
LEARNLAB QUALIFYING: 1. Justin Grant, 4, TOPP-10.565; 2. Brady Bacon, 20, Dyson-10.694; 3. Jake Swanson, 5T, Daming Swanson-10.756; 4. Kyle Cummins, 3p, Petty-10.791; 5. Ricky Lewis, 41, Lewis-10.855; 6. Briggs Danner, 39, Hogue-10.870; 7. Chase Stockon, 92, Sertich-10.889; 8. Mitchel Moles, 19AZ, Reinbold/Underwood-10.892; 9. Steven Drevicki, 19s, DeGre-10.916; 10. Kevin Thomas Jr., 3R, Rock Steady-10.947; 11. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-10.950; 12. Hayden Reinbold, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-10.957; 13. Logan Seavey, 57, Abacus-11.001; 14. Ronald Helmick, 22R, Helmick-11.182; 15. Cale Coons, 63, Dooling/Curb-Agajanian-11.244; 16. Christian Bruno, 3BC, JMO-11.249; 17. Charles Davis Jr., 47, Davis-11.259; 18. Scott Frack, 39x, PLP-11.366; 19. Brett Rose, 45R, Rose-11.680; 20. Dirk Rimrott, 1x, Rimrott-11.847; 21. Olivia Thayer, 39T, Thayer-12.033; 22. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-NT.
K1 RACEGEAR FIRST HEAT: (10 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Kyle Cummins (5), 2. Justin Grant (6), 3. Kevin Thomas Jr. (3), 4. Chase Stockon (4), 5. Logan Seavey (2), 6. Brett Rose (7), 7. Christian Bruno (1). 1:53.605
TJ FORGED SECOND HEAT: (10 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Robert Ballou (3), 2. Mitchel Moles (4), 3. Brady Bacon (6), 4. Ricky Lewis (5), 5. Charles Davis Jr. (1), 6. Dirk Rimrott (7), 7. Ronald Helmick (2). 1:50.964
K & N FILTERS THIRD HEAT: (10 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Cale Coons (2), 2. Briggs Danner (5), 3. Steven Drevicki (4), 4. Hayden Reinbold (3), 5. Jake Swanson (6), 6. Scott Frack (1), 7. Olivia Thayer (7). 1:55.779
FEATURE: (40 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Briggs Danner (1), 2. Kyle Cummins (3), 3. Jake Swanson (4), 4. Justin Grant (6), 5. Kevin Thomas Jr. (12), 6. Logan Seavey (14), 7. Steven Drevicki (11), 8. Mitchel Moles (10), 9. Cale Coons (8), 10. Hayden Reinbold (13), 11. Charles Davis Jr. (15), 12. Ronald Helmick (19), 13. Robert Ballou (7), 14. Scott Frack (16), 15. Chase Stockon (9), 16. Brett Rose (17), 17. Olivia Thayer (21), 18. Dirk Rimrott (18), 19. Brady Bacon (5), 20. Ricky Lewis (2), 21. Christian Bruno (20), 22. C.J. Leary (22).
