Brown scores third ACT win of season at Star

The only thing warmer than the temperature at Star Speedway Sunday afternoon was Gabe Brown’s hot streak.

The 2024 Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour champion visited victory lane for the third time this season, dominating the final two thirds of the Tour’s postponed Coastal Clash 150.

And after an off-site evaluation of Brown’s powerplant on Monday, the Center Conway, N.H. racer’s sixth win in his last eleven series starts was confirmed.

Where this train stops, no one knows.

Rescheduled twice for rain in the month of May, Sunday’s showdown at the Epping, N.H. quarter-mile was the fifth event on the calendar for the Vermont-based Tour. Star’s weekly Late Model division held its own 100-lap preliminary event as part of Saturday’s program, with Jimmy Renfrew, Jr. taking the checkers against a handful of Tour regulars.

Entering the weekend as the points leader and a two-time race winner, Brown could start no better than tenth, placing him well back of polesitter Brandon Gray. Gray, a recent Late Model feature winner at Thunder Road, held the point for the first 11 laps before Star graduate Erick Sands powered past to take the lead.

The first yellow came early as Spring Green winner Kaiden Fisher met with trouble in traffic. Fisher’s hood flew back after contact, blocking his view for a couple laps before he ultimately spun with Canadian Jeff Côté. On the restart, Côté climbed over the rear of Chase Curtis, dealing heavy damage to both cars and bringing a premature end to his afternoon.

Sands asserted himself at the point as Jonathan Bouvrette moved past Gray and into second. Brown eased past Cole Littlewood for fourth, pressuring the surprising Gray for third.

A lap-30 yellow gathered up the leaders, with Bouvrette sliding back on the restart as Gray retook second. Gray shadowed Sands for the top spot, as a turn-four melee on lap 44 collected Jake Johnson, rookie Jacob Burns, and Derryck Anderson.

Brown got past Gray for second on the restart, as further trouble for Burns slowed the field again. Sands shook free of Brown on the next green flag, keeping Brown at bay for a few laps. Twice a winner in Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour competition, Sands was hungry for a win at his home track.

But those hopes went up in smoke on lap 56 as Sands’ car lost power off turn two, coming to an unceremonious stop on the backstretch. Brown flashed past and into the lead, while an alternator failure would spell an early end of the day for Sands.

Brown and Gray pulled away on the next restart, gapping the field as they approached halfway. Renfrew, who had failed post-heat tech and started shotgun on the field, had charged to third. Fisher, despite his early incident, had clawed his way back into the top five, working over Jesse Switser for fourth. A long green-flag stretch ended on lap 105, as rookie Holdyn Sullivan skidded off track and nearly plunged into the turn-two woods.

Brown and Gray brought the field back to the green flag, with Renfrew hot on their heels. Off turn four, Renfrew got into Gray, who could not gather his car back up and spun down the frontstretch to bring out the yellow once again. Race officials pointed the finger at Renfrew, sending him to the tail of the field for the contact. Renfrew responded with a different finger, peeling off and parking his own car for the afternoon instead.

Fisher cycled into second for the restart, but Brown pulled away from the drop of the green, building an advantage over another long green-flag stretch while the field shuffled behind him. One last yellow flag slowed the action, as early frontrunner Littlewood turned Bryan Kruczek as Brown beared down on the tail end of the lead lap. The leaders dodged calamity, but the field was bunched up for an eight-lap sprint to the checkers.

Brown turned up the heat on the final run, cruising to a 3.164-second advantage as he took his third win of 2026.

A single-race winner in his first two seasons with ACT, including his championship season, the young racer has stacked up seven wins since the start of 2025 on a variety of tracks.

With duct tape plastered over the nose of his yellow Chevrolet, Fisher finished second to give Brown’s Factory 47 setup shop a one-two finish. Four of the season’s five races have been won by Dale Shaw Race Cars chassis prepped by Brown’s new venture.

Johnson, despite heavy right-front damage to his Hartwell Motorsports entry, came home third, keeping him solidly in second in the points chase. Switser held on for fourth, while Star weekly challenger Nathan LeClair rounded out the top five.

Geoff Rollins, Aaron Fellows, Sullivan, Dylan Payea and Kruczek completed the top ten, with Littlewood the only other car on the lead lap.

Brown’s early-season dominance may have been behind a decision to pull the race winner’s engine for off-site dyno testing. ACT officials confirmed Monday that the engine cleared post-race inspection, locking in Brown’s third win of the year.

Such dominance has been rare in recent seasons for the Tour. D.J. Shaw and Derek Gluchacki won three races each in 2022; Jimmy Hebert won three in 2021. Scott Payea was the last driver to win five races in a season, back in 2017. But with ACT’s formula that pits weekly competitors against a strong touring base, rarely do drivers win more than a couple races a year.

Brown just may be out to rewrite the record book.

Unofficial Results
Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour | Coastal Clash 150
Star Speedway, Epping, N.H.
1. (47NH) Gabe Brown
2. (18VT) Kaiden Fisher
3. (91CT) Jake Johnson
4. (25NH) Jesse Switser
5. (10NH) Nathan LeClair
6. (02WP) Geoff Rollins
7. (29NH) Aaron Fellows
8. (0NH) Holdyn Sullivan
9. (7ME) Dylan Payea
10. (0ME) Bryan Kruczek
11. (73MA) Cole Littlewood
12. (27MA) Chase Curtis
13. (41QC) Jonathan Bouvrette
14. (33QC) Rémi Perreault
15. (23NH) Craig Smith
16. (00VT) Brandon Gray
17. (00NH) Jimmy Renfrew, Jr.
18. (30RI) Jacob Burns
19. (36NH) Erick Sands
20. (47MA) Justin Storace
21. (2CT) Derryck Anderson
22. (51QC) Jeff Côté

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