For competitors who finished well at the 2025 NASA Championships, the drive home probably did not seem all that long. They likely felt alert and energized, and when they got home, the trip was apt to feel shorter than the drive to the track.
That’s one of the unspoken spillover benefits of winning. The feeling lasts from the moment you see the checkers first to the time you walk in the door at home to show off your new trophy — and in some cases, trophies. There’s no other feeling quite like it. If you could bottle and sell it, you’d make a fortune.
The 2025 NASA Championships was held at Ozarks International Raceway, one of the most challenging and inspiring racing circuits in the nation. It’s fast, with lots of blind corners and rises, and lots of compression to boost grip where you need it. There’s no other track quite like it.
When the checkered flags flew, these were the drivers who got to hoist big trophies, show off larger-than-life checks and spray copious amounts of bubbly. There’s nothing quite like a NASA Championships, and no stories quite like those below.
944 Spec
Calvin Rowe was the man to beat in 944 Spec all weekend. He set the fastest lap in Friday’s Q1, won the qualifying race, nabbed pole position for the big race on Sunday and took the win and the Championship.
Rowe had jumped out to an early lead and established a gap on Jeremy Pohlman in the second spot. About two thirds of the race in, double-yellows came out and bunched up the field again. That gave him another shot at getting around Rowe, but it was not to be. After the race restarted, Rowe went on to take the win.
“It was harder than it looked. That was probably the most hard-fought 944 Spec weekend I’ve ever had. Typically I can get out front and run away, but there was no running away. I was under pressure from start of the weekend to the end of the weekend,” Rowe said. “It was definitely really hard fought, really hard to earn, and it took some digging deep to stay out front, so it was good. But definitely hats off to Jeremy. He pushed me. I’ve never had someone give me that much pressure before, so it was definitely a new feeling to kind of have to navigate that and keep it clean.”
Though Rowe finished the race with a decent lead, the caution later in the race gave Pohlman a chance to cool off his car and tires as the field gathered behind the pace car. When the race restarted, having Pohlman in his mirror gave Rowe the motivation he needed to push hard to take the 944 Spec Championship.
“I think I overheated the tires early in the race and so my midrace was a little greasy and so that’s when he pulled away from me, and I never could pull it back in,” Pohlman said. “Congratulations to Calvin. He did such an excellent job driving today. I didn’t have enough for him. I didn’t leave anything in the tank, I promise. I think I ran one of the best races I’ve run in a long time after being out of the sport for five years, and getting back in this, it’s a pretty strong showing.”
Another strong showing came from Shawn Taylor, who lost rear grip in the downhill exit of Turn 1 and managed to keep it off the wall. After bringing the car to a halt, Taylor resumed his race, but the front runners were long gone.
“I didn’t come to the test day Thursday and we just didn’t get a lot of time until yesterday, so the car wasn’t turning well at all. My numbers on the dyno were excellent, so I don’t have any complaints there,” Taylor said. “I just couldn’t drive well. I deserved my third. Calvin and Jeremy rocked this weekend.”
American Iron
Three-time champion Bruce Byerly had never been so nervous going into a NASA National Championship race than at Ozarks International Raceway. He overcame any nerves to cruise to the American Iron championship.
“The track is crazy intimidating when you first walk up to it,” said Byerly, who runs the NASA Florida Region. “But after a few days. I mean, it’s probably the most fun track I’ve ever been on.”
Two weeks before the NASA National Championships, Byerly had put in a new engine in the Ford Mustang but was dealing with car problems during the four-day championship.
“We thought we had it running right. It ran fine on the dyno, and then didn’t run,” he said. “We’ve been throwing, all the way up until this morning, a bunch of sensors at it to make it run, hoping for the best.”
Before he got to the starting grid, the team had to replace a valve stem. “That would have been the end of it right there,” said Byerly, who also won the American Iron Championship at PittRace in 2023.
The American Iron class had six cars start the race and finish. Isaiah Haines of the Mid-South Region had trouble with blown front shocks and a bad oil cooler. He replaced the shocks and reset the right height and replaced the oil cooler the morning of the Championships race. All that hard work paid off because Haines finished in second. His father’s car had lost an engine earlier in the weekend, so Haines had a car he could pull parts from for the Championship race.
“This was the fastest I’ve ever run at this track. I didn’t know the car could go, you know, as fast as it could, but I pushed it, drifted around most of the turns and bounced off the wall, coming out of 7 there, but going on to the roller coaster,” Haines said. “So that was a bit of a bit of a spook, but I kept it straight, and the car held on. Didn’t have any issues, any failures. We’ve had a whole week of mechanical failures, so I’m just glad to see that the car held on for this session, and we made it to P2.”
In third place, NASA Great Lakes driver and National Series Director Bob Collins had come to Ozarks International Raceway twice earlier this year to become more familiar with the track. Collins wasn’t able to match the pace of Byerly and Haines, and after 45 minutes of racing, he finished in third 29 seconds behind the winner.
“We had no problems with the car. Driver ran out of talent. I need to work on it more. I’m OK with it. There’s work to do,” Collins said. “But congratulations to Bruce, two-time AI champion, and Isaiah, just finishing his rookie part of the season and finished in second. So congratulations to those guys. I just didn’t have enough for them.”
American Iron Extreme
Brian Faessler completed the trifecta of NASA National Championships at the Ozarks International Raceway, winning the American Iron Extreme class, GT and Time Trial GT to add to his trophy collection. Faessler now has nine NASA National Championships.
“I don’t think many people usually run more than one, maybe two classes,” Faessler said. “To do two race groups and a Time Trial is pretty challenging on the car.”
Heading into the Sunday matchup, Faessler was anticipating a head-to-head challenge with 2024 American Iron Extreme Champion Derric Carter. Carter, though, was having mechanical issues. When he took the green flag in second gear, he upshifted to third and for some reason the dual-clutch gearbox caught neutral and over-revved the engine. That allowed Faessler to build a gap and let Nick Plocienik to pass Carter.
“The electronics were not happy about the fact that it was, you know, so high of a rev, it said clutch over temp. So luckily, the double yellow came out and allowed the car to get slowed down,” Carter said. “Once it gets down to a certain speed for a period of time, it kind of resets all those electronics. So it gave me, it gave me the opportunity to get a second run at it. But the momentum I needed going over the Roller Coaster, since Nick had gotten in front of me, I had to work through getting past him, and by that time, he had already just put so much distance between what we had done. There just wasn’t the opportunity.”
With Carter facing issues during the race, Faessler maintained a steady pace to extend his lead to more than 16 seconds over Carter. Faessler turned his best lap of 2:24.159.
Faessler’s car was subject to a protest on Friday, which NASA officials subsequently denied.
Driving the lone Chevrolet in American Iron Extreme, Nick Plocienik of the MidAmerica region finished in third. He was also doing his share of troubleshooting throughout the Championships.
“I was fighting mechanical issues the whole time. I had no dash. I had traction control on the whole time. It wouldn’t come off. Race mode was out. I did what I could do. It’s just been crazy, mechanical, electrical issues we’ve been fighting all season long. I mean, it’s a factory ECU, but we’re switching to Motec and a sequential, so next year we’ll be ready,” Plocienik said. “I mean, it was a great race. Faessler’s amazing. Derric, he’s a monster. I’ve learned a lot. So it was a great weekend. Last year I had a track record here, at 2:32, and then these guys came and just destroyed it. So now, I did a 2:30.3, so it was good.”
GT
Some national championships are won in a dogfight. Brian Faessler’s GT title at the NASA National Championships was a survival story. Two cars in the class didn’t make it to starting grid for Sunday’s Championship race, leaving Faessler as the sole entry and the new National Champion in GT.
Faessler ran a couple of laps around OIR and parked the Ford Mustang to preserve the car because he was participating in Time Trial GT and American Iron Extreme.
“Tage Evanson was maybe going to come out, but I saw he got towed in not too long before the race started,” Faessler said. “I was mainly just out there for insurance on the off chance he was able to make it out, but mainly just trying to get my head ready for the race.”
The GT title was Faessler’s eighth NASA National Championship, and he would go on to win two more NASA National Championships on Sunday, bringing his total to 10 championships. Faessler has run the Ford Mustang for more than a decade, a testament to the team’s maintenance program.
“I know how hard I need to run the car to (get) certain times, and I kind of know the weak points of the car,” said Faessler, who runs in the NASA Great Lakes Region. “It’s the 10th or 11th year running this car, so I know what to do and not to do.”
Legends
It has been said that you have to finish to win. Bobby Christensen did not finish. He completed nine of the 12 laps before his car suffered a mechanical, but he still took the victory to win his third consecutive National Championship. Bobby Pugh had initially won the National Championship race on Sunday but was disqualified for passing on a yellow flag in the Roller Coaster, which moved Christensen into the top spot. As a result, Pugh owes dinner to his fellow Legends racers.
Toward the end of the race, Pugh’s engine threw a rod on the Legends car. “The car was running good, and I had no indication it was going to blow up,” Pugh said. “It just went boom.”
After winning Saturday’s qualifying races, Christensen had put some distance between himself and Pugh in the two-car field before the mechanical failure. The Legends class started the National Championships with five cars before mechanical problems kept three from the starting grid.
“I drove consistent and just tried keeping it close, keeping it smart,” said Christensen, who was denied a third NASA National Championship. “I ran 80 percent of what I did yesterday, so it was good and fun.”
NASA Prototype
The NASA Prototype race at the 2025 NASA Championships was essentially a war of attrition. After a safety car period, class leader Tyler Atkinson took the restart, but soon was off pace and driving off line. When he pulled into impound after nine laps, he was worried his lead and a potential win would evaporate.
“Obviously, I’m not allowed to look at my car yet, but I think my shifter cable broke because I had lost the ability to shift. So, I was stuck in second gear,” Atkinson said. “I thought I was going to hand the win to Steve, but luckily he DNF’d before I did.”
Second place Steve Seiler thinks he bent a wheel early in the race and pulled off due to excess vibration.
“My right front tire, I believe bent without hitting anything. I think it was coming off a Turn 9 and yesterday in the qualifying race, the same thing happened. It felt like my right front tire was about to come off shaking a lot and as soon as the car unloads around that corner,” Seiler said. “Part of racing is some weekends you spend a lot of money to come somewhere and things don’t work out well. So the good thing about this weekend though is I dropped lap time. My previous best was 2:39 and over the weekend, not in the race, but I was down in the low 2:32s. So there’s some benefits. Learn the track and learn to carry higher speed.”
Spec E30
Matthew Ibrahim woke up Sunday morning not feeling so great. In addition, he had been trailing Garrett Manes all weekend, and that was certainly the case in the Championships race on Sunday. But Ibrahims was much closer to Manes on Sunday, within striking distance.
And strike he did in Turn 11 about two-thirds of the way through the 45-minute race. Ibrahim initiated the pass heading into Turn 11 and took the next couple of corners to complete the pass. He maintained his lead and went on to take the win and the Spec E30 Championship, his first.
“Garrett’s a phenomenal driver, honestly. He’s so good. He was killing it. He was doing amazing” Ibrahim said. “I felt like he was a little bit faster in a straight line than me. Plus he went on tires that I think were older than mine. I went on fresh tires.”
After Ibrahim had made the pass for the lead, Manes suffered some electrical gremlins and his car that grew worse in the closing laps of the race. That allowed Sean Aron to pass Manes, who finished the race in third place.
“Yeah, definitely a bummer. I mean, to have such a strong run for Wigen Water Technologies, we put so much time into this and we had a really good run going, but come up a couple spots short this year,” Manes said. “It was probably 15 minutes into the race right after we went back to green. It just started cutting out rhythmically. It was basically on-off, on-off just every straightaway. I was not really even getting out of fourth gear. It’s just I was a sitting duck. There wasn’t much defense I could do.”
That put Aron, who was out of sight of the leaders for much of the race, in a position to overtake Manes and scamper toward a second-place finish.
“They were a full corner head. I didn’t see them, and then all of a sudden I saw a white car up ahead, and I started going 10/10ths again,” Aron said. “So I put the hammer down and I got him right at the end. It was literally the final hairpin. I came out and I got on the gas and he sputtered and I got around him going down the front straight.”
Spec E46
Team Mick Blue Racing competed in Time Trial, and raced in Super Touring 5 and Spec E46 during the Championships weekend. Driver Michael Omelko finished third in TT5 and third in ST5, but the win he cared about most was Spec E46.
Omelko has a Spec E30 Championship from 2024 and between seasons he moved up to Spec E46. Omelko had built up a lead, but when the full-course caution came out, he had Jeremy Evans in his mirrors again. When the race restarted, Omelko put his head down chased the cars ahead of him and established a gap and went on to take the win and the Spec E46 Championship.
“When a full course caution comes out and everything is neutralized, but I mean that’s racing,” Omelko said. “And then the restart was good and basically did the same thing, tried to pull away. And once I saw that I was able to hang with the Mustangs. I basically, I use the Mustang as my rabbit.”
Coming in second, Jeremy Evans got closer to Omelko during the full-course caution, but admitted to a few mistakes that let Omelko establish a gap.
“I just had no pace for him today. Yesterday was a lot better, but today he had it. Couldn’t even touch him. He’s a good driver,” Evans said, acknowledging the gap he put between him and third place. “That helped to see that Jason and Greg were battling it out and kind of slowed them up a little bit. Gave me a little bit to work with. So it gave me a little bit of breathing room and like I said, he (Omelko) just kept being consistent. “
The closest contest in Spec E46 and one of the closest of the weekend was the battle for third. Jason Rikke and Greg Hartman waged a battle in the late stages of the race. Hartman was right on Rikke’s bumper, closing and falling back in different spots on the course. In the end, it was close, but Rikke managed to keep Hartman behind him and take the final step on the podium.
“I started having gearbox trouble. I was getting stuck into second for a little bit and then I was trying to go in a third and it grind right here at the corner and I could see him close the gap and I’m like, ‘Ah, come on, finish the race,’” Rikke said afterward. “If you hear my video, you’ll hear whack. I just shoved it in there. I was like, it’s the last race. Let’s go. It’s the best you can do and hope for. But I knew darn well Greg is a great competitor. He’s always there. That’s what makes spec racing so fun. We’re all real close.”
Spec Miata
Spec Miata at the 2025 NASA Championships was the kind of race that drivers always hope for and the kind of race fans want to see.
As happened during the qualifying race on Saturday, Teen Mazda Challenge drivers Vaughan Weber and Lincoln Larson leaped out from the tightly packed start to lead the field and build a gap. For the first, oh, two-thirds of the race Weber led Larson around the track as they began to inch away from the field.
Then, on the exit of Turn 11, Weber got a little loose and dropped a wheel off track, which cost him the momentum needed to climb the hill on the way to Turn 12. That was all Larson needed to take the lead.
Larson led Weber for the remainder of the race, but Weber was always within striking distance. On the last lap in the hairpin turn that empties onto the front straight, Weber got alongside Larson and the two sprinted to a photo finish, with Larson taking the win by half a bumper.
“I was just sticking with him the whole race and then waited for him to make a mistake. He made a mistake and I got my chance to get past him and then I was able to pull a bit of a gap every lap,” Larson said after the race. “He’d catch me in the first sector every time, but I’d be able to pull it in the second and third sector, and then he’s super fast in the final corner and he got on the inside of the final corner. It was just a drag race and to the finish line.”
After leading for most of the race, Weber’s bobble exiting Turn 11 gave Larson the opportunity to get ahead. Weber gave it all he had, and exiting the final corner he got next to Larson in a dash for the checkers.
“I knew that was my last chance, so I was like, you know what, it just has to go here. So stuck inside last turn and then flat-shifting it to the finish. Not lifting, but couldn’t make it work,” Weber said. “I think I lost by less than .200 seconds, so I’m not disappointed with that. I mean, I am, but I did my best with the car I had, so I was pretty proud of that.”
From his third place position, Vinnie Meskelis could see the leaders and he was gaining slightly in the last third of the race. Despite the improvements he and his team made to the car from Saturday, he was not able to close the gap and finished third.
“The car was really fast. I think I was gaining a 10th every lap, but the gap was too big,” Meskelis said. “And then we hit lapped traffic and I got the short end of the stick in that situation. That was kind of the way the race went from there. Then they started fighting, and I was too far away, but congrats to Lincoln, my teammate. He did a hell of a job this weekend.”
The Spec Miata Championships podium was the same as the Teen Mazda Challenge podium, with all three drivers collecting contingencies for both series.
Super Touring 1
Joe Kellerman captured his third NASA National Championship in Super Touring 1, continuing a dominant run for the NASA Great Lakes racer.
Kellerman was on pole for the race and never looked back. Kellerman built a 10-second lead over second-place finisher Sean Butterfield of the NASA Arizona Region only to see it shrink to 3 seconds after the yellow flag was thrown.
Kellerman still had enough left in the Corvette Z06 to hold off Butterfield and Jason Perry, who joined them on the podium in third place. Kellerman’s best lap was 2:30.116.
“Three in a row, baby, I’ll take it,” said Kellerman, who won NASA National Championships in Utah and Pittsburgh. Kellerman may have felt the pressure to win his Super Touring 1 crown, he wasn’t showing leading up the finale. “There was definitely more pressure trying to win a third. I said my prayers and prepared as much as I possibly could.”
With perfect weather conditions on Sunday, Kellerman was hoping to beat the track record but it wasn’t meant to be.
“The back of the car was bottomed out, in the past it wasn’t bottoming out, so I had to brake before every dip,” he said. “I was going slower between every dip so the car wouldn’t bottom out, because I don’t know, I didn’t know what it was hitting. So, that slowed me down a good couple seconds every lap.”
By the time the checkers flew Butterfield was just 2.25 seconds behind Kellerman. As part of the JDP Racing team, Butterfield worked hard to learn the track, but his weekend went smoothly.
“It was just challenging, just to try to learn it, and then just trying to keep up with everybody else, and there’s a lot of competitive guys out there, and that was a lot of fun,” Butterfield said. “Track was obviously in great shape.”
Butterfield’s teammate Jason Perry came to Ozarks International Raceway with the goal of winning. The team finished second in Utah last year, behind Kellerman, so they were motivated. Perry ended up third behind Butterfield in the sister car.
“To have both of our cars on the podium was huge, it was huge. So I was pretty proud of my team, all the guys,” Perry said. “You know, Sean was a year ago running HPDE in NASA, so to watch him go from that to a Championship, that was pretty cool. I was more excited about that.”
Super Touring 2
The Super Touring 2 class was a battle of attrition with two cars making it to the starting grid for the NASA Championships and when the race was finished, Florida’s Ken Mantovani was standing atop the podium.
Ben Grambau was the favorite going in, but the car’s suspension broke in Turn 8 with two laps to go, allowing Mantovani to drive home with the National Championship. “It went sideways at 105 mph, and I’m beyond lucky I didn’t stuff it into a wall,” said Grambau, who came in second.
“I was just happy to hang on and it was a battle of attrition to this weekend,” Mantovani said. “Ben (Grambau) was definitely the stronger driver and had the stronger car this weekend, so I give him props. I just won by default.”
Mantovani was being modest having collected his third NASA National Championship, winning won in 2017 and 2021. Yet the Florida Region racer kept it close and took advantage of Grambau’s mechanical problem. Mantovani is glad he made the trip to Missouri to race Ozarks International Raceway.
“I specifically came to this one because of the track,” Mantovani said. “This is my favorite track in the country or just any of the tracks I’ve raced basically in the world at this point.”
Super Touring 3
David Lecko’s parents drove over from St. Louis to watch their son win his first NASA National Championship on the Ozarks International Raceway traffic. After being the runner-up at the 2024 NASA National Championship in Utah, Lecko was able to close the deal in 2025.
“I’ve continued to get better, and every time we go out there, they’re making the car better,” Lecko said. “I’ve got thank Eastty, my coach, and Susan Pfeiffer, my mechanic, for doing a lot of work with the car and me.”
Lecko started at P1 and built an early lead, eventually growing it to more than 35 seconds over second-place finisher Nick Padron. Lecko was tick off the track record for ST3, turning a best lap of 2:30.86. The NASA Texas Region racer had to slow up midway during the race because of a temperature warning sensor.
“We had a temp warning light yesterday, so I wasn’t sure what that was,” said Lecko, who the top Saturday’s top ST3 qualifier with a best lap of 02:33.1. “I wanted to make sure we made it to the end.”
Lecko is already looking toward 2026 and defending his first NASA National Championship. “I’m absolutely going to defend it, wherever it’s held,” he said.
In his first year of racing and his first NASA Championships event, Padron understood the cadence of the weekend. For example, you must make it through day one to get to day two and you must survive day two to get to the Championships race on day three. He knew Sunday was the most important day at his home track.
“I’m kind of spoiled being at my home track, so the familiarity is great to have,” Padron said. “We were slowly stepping up our times throughout the weekend, progressively were getting better as we were learning, looking at the data, making changes. So, yeah, we made all the way to Sunday, and the car did well.”
Adam Merchant, who started fifth on the grid, clawed his way forward to earn third place. Merchant faced the same learning curve as many drivers, trying to find the limits around a track with 19 challenging turns.
“You know, you practice, you come out here, but it’s intimidating. It’s a technical track. It’s a ton of fun,” Merchant said. “There’s not a lot of time to think between the corners, and you can only prepare so much to get out here. But it went smoothly compared to some of the other weekends I’ve had. But you know, that doesn’t mean it went smoothly. We knew coming out here what the competition was and how fast some of those guys are, but yeah, you’re still playing to win. You know, coming out here with a more sorted car next year will be definitely the goal.”
Super Touring 4
Early on in the event, Super Touring 4 driver Scott Smith said he had never won a National Championship, and he felt like this was his year. We didn’t dare publish that quote in early releases lest we jinx him, but here we are on Sunday, and Smith is the new ST4 National Champion. It really was his year.
Smith took advantage of his pole position and built a gap on second place Svilen Kanev, whose lap times had been dropping all weekend. Smith also set a new ST4 track record at 2:32.789, a record he set two years ago and then lost it last year.
“Part of my mission was to beat that,” Smith said. “But then one I saw the time that the Miata did this morning, the 2:33.2. I was like, no, that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to do that a couple hours later in a race, managing tires, whatever. But the times just kept ticking down and I got several 32s, and I’m so happy. So stoked.”
In the end, it was Smith’s race to lose, but despite the quick lap times, he never took it for granted.
“I was getting kind of nervous like Svilen did his personal best that beat my time from a couple of years ago and I was honestly worried that he would be a threat,” Smith said. “He’s fast and he’s learning, but he’s very close. It all just worked.”
Svilen Kanev was dealing with traffic like every other driver, although not much of it was from his class. The gap between Smith and Kanev and the car behind him made it so that Kanev was racing himself more than others.
“We tried throwing everything at Scott. I think he used his stickers yesterday. We kept stickers for today,” Kanev said. “But yeah, he just got too much pace. Nothing we can do about it. But yeah, good race, little lonely. But yeah, I’ll take second any day.”
The race for third was a different story. Patrick Kroll maintained his third-place position for the whole race, but Lisa Vaughn was on his bumper the whole time, well within striking distance if Kroll were to make too big an error, Vaughn would have pounced.
“My hat’s off to her. She drove an amazing race as well, and it was one of those races where you put one foot wrong, you’re going to lose the position. She’s incredibly consistent and fast,” Kroll said afterward. “And I got a little bit of luck on my side with some of the yellows and some overtaking opportunities that would’ve been provided to her. So a little luck on my side, and my car started to feel a little worse toward the end, but cooled it back down a little bit and was able to hold on. I don’t know if I could have held her back from many more laps.”
Super Touring 5
Justin Mason was able to get ahead, stay ahead and take the win in the ST5 qualifying race on Saturday.
For Sunday’s Championship race, Mason knew he needed to carry as much speed through the slow corners and really cowboy up for the faster turns at Ozarks International Raceway. Driving a Spec MX-5 car that does not have the benefit of aerodynamic aids, Mason knew he needed to drive as error-free a race as possible.
Early in the race, he had a mirror full of Ross Carmichael and Bryce Kliewer. About halfway through the race, Kliewer dropped a couple of wheels off track at the exit of the fast downhill Turn 1, but was able to gather it up and continue. That let Carmichael get by, but a couple of laps later, Carmichael went off track and struck a barrier, which ended his race.
All the while Mason was building his lead, which he would hold till the end to take the win and the ST5 Championship.
“I just tried to stay consistent and keep my speed up and hope that my competitors were making mistakes, and it looked like they were so, I just tried to keep it clean and it worked out,” Mason said after the 45-minute race. “I started with endurance racing, and I’m pretty used to that, so the longer the race goes on, I think I pick it up a little bit.”
Right up until his incident in Turn 1, which didn’t show up on the livestream as contact, but was, Kliewer felt he had good pace, but wasn’t able to overcome the off.
“That set me a few seconds behind. I had the pace to catch up, caught up there for a little bit, and then the tires went off and that was the race,” Kliewer said. “But it was good. We had a couple of good battles.”
In addition to competing to Spec E46 and TT5, Team Mick Blue Racing came in third.
“I’m just blown away. Third place is absolutely amazing. It’s more than I expected to be honest,” driver Michael Omelko. “And what makes me even happier is I did my fastest lap over the weekend in the race with a 1:41.13 or something like that. And I didn’t even know how it happened.”
Super Unlimited
Jonathan Finstrom had a commanding lead in Super Unlimited when a full-course caution came out. As the pace car was circling the course looking for Finstrom, his Staudacher S12 sports racer was struck from behind by an out-of-class car, which punctured his tire and damaged his suspension.
That put Joe Henski in the lead of Super Unlimited, just a bit ahead of Jason Ross, who, with help from Henski, had repaired his Ligier JSP320 in time for the Championships race.
After the restart, traffic played a role, but Henski was able to stay ahead of Ross and go on to take the Super Unlimited win and the Championship.
“Yeah, there was a lot going on out there today. We had a good fast car today, but the traffic was pretty interesting,” Henski said. “We’ve got a lot of different speeds of cars out there and so we got lined back up, and took back off. The leader unfortunately had an incident with somebody getting into him and I was able to be there at the end and capitalize and take home the win today. So, I’m pretty ecstatic. It’s my first year of racing in a Radical and first year in NASA this year and so it’s been a lot of fun learning the car and learning NASA and what a tremendous organization it’s been to be a part of this year.”
After spending the night repairing oil pan damage, with help from winner Joe Henski, Ross took second place in Super Unlimited in his Ligier JSP320.
“I wouldn’t be here today if Joe didn’t help me yesterday. I hit a large something on track and we had the car in a thousand pieces last night, and we fixed it and it was a hole in the oil pan. We got that fixed up. But when I went out on track today, when I started getting into the gas, I saw a bunch of oil smoke coming out the back and I figured we overfilled it, but I said I’m not going to ruin everybody else’s race. Everybody went around me and then later on I just stuck around in traffic.”
Finstrom was able to come into the pits and have his wheel replaced, but the damage was more significant than just a wheel. Finstrom finished in third, five laps down from the leaders.
Thunder Roadster
Derrek Morehead started at the back of the Thunder Roadster pack after breaking a suspension link in an earlier race. It didn’t really seem to matter because Morehead climbed 12 spots in the deep Thunder Roadster class, the largest at the 2025 Championships, to take his second NASA National Championship.
Morehead focused early in the race to fight through traffic in the deep Thunder Roadster field. In the Great Lakes Region, the Thunder Roadster series practices a lot of reverse grids, so Morehead had plenty of experience chasing down the pack.
“I tried to clear as much traffic as I could in the first several corners,” Morehead said. “I started out with just a little bit lower tire pressure than I normally do, so it would come back in and be better toward the end of the race. It usually works out pretty good on the tire pressures, and it worked out well this time.”
The group had a yellow flag late in the race, which gave second-place finisher John Spain and Jeff Stutler, who finished third, an opportunity to catch the speedy Morehead, but they ran out of time.
“I saw all my guys stacking up behind me, so I knew it was going to be another short sprint to the finish,” Morehead said. “I was just able to hold them off and they made some good challenges and didn’t give
up. It wasn’t easy.”
No stranger to the podium at NASA Championships events, John Spain suffered brake failure in the qualifying race, which cost him a few spots on grid. Starting from third, Spain was working his way forward when he had to check up a bit for a car that had a close call in the Roller Coaster.
“Then it was just a battle to fight my way back. I managed to get up to the front for about one turn, and Derek was behind me, and he managed to get my draft and get right past me, right after I got the lead. And then he was in the lead and I was in second. That’s how it finished,” Spain said. “Being in a spec series, the cars really are identical the in terms of performance. And so it’s the skill of the driver that gets you to the front, and Derek had the skill today.”
From his position in third, Stutler had his hands full with traffic and the challenges of the track and the loads it puts on their cars. The open-cockpit cars also present drivers with conditions not seen in production-based race cars, with rushing wind and dirt adding to the difficulty.
“It’s really hard to get away from people if you’re ahead of them, just because they’re very draft sensitive, but the racing is just, it is second to none. I was on the podium in 2023 as well, hoping to get a little better this time, but very happy to manage a podium,” said Stutler, who tipped his hat to Morehead for the win. “Derek is exceptional. There’s a reason this is his second National Championship. You know, there were 22 I think Thunder Roadsters in 2023 when he won. And he is just fast at every single place we go, and clean and fast consistently through the entire race. I’m not surprised to see him there.”
