Brown becomes first NH driver since 2010 to win Vermont Milk Bowl

Gabe Brown never thought he would find himself in position to win the Vermont Milk Bowl presented by Northfield Savings Bank.

But after 136 uneventful laps, a slide for life across the start-finish line, a milk bath, and an intimate interlude with “Copper,” what once seemed like an impossible achievement was a career milestone achieved.

And as the young Granite Stater soaked in the meaning of claiming the crown jewel of Thunder Road International Speedbowl and the Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour, he reiterated that, despite his turn of fortune at the track, the victory felt like a long shot.

“I never thought I’d be in position to win this race, so I just put myself in the best position possible to win the race,” he said. “All the cards fell our way today. Nothing went wrong, like it has many times this year. Nothing went wrong.

“The cards just fell into place, and I did my job to hang onto it there.”

A cornerstone of Vermont motorsports for 64 runnings, the Vermont Milk Bowl is often cited as one of the toughest short track races in North America. Its three-segment format, with full-field inverts between segments to shuffle the running order, crowns not the driver who wins the third and final segment, but the driver who scores the lowest aggregate finishing position across all three, rewarding a balance of strategy and persistence.

And despite its unofficial place on ACT’s touring schedule—Tour drivers must make an attempt to maintain their full-time status—the Milk Bowl has favored Thunder Road’s weekly ranks over its visitors.

Saturday’s qualifying rounds reflected the local bias. Five-time and reigning “King of the Road” Jason Corliss and 2024 track champion Kaiden Fisher blistered the track in time trials, with Fisher’s pole speed setting a new track record. Breakout star Brandon Gray took the first heat race win, while reigning Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour champ Raphaël Lessard won the second.

Jamie Swallow, Jr. opened Sunday’s on-track activities with a win in the last-chance race, while veteran Wayne Helliwell, Jr. nipped Jesse Laquerre to take the second transfer slot. Cole Littlewood earned ACT’s full-time provisional, while Laquerre joined eight other competitors in loading up early.

Following the opening ceremonies, Fisher and Corliss led the field to green for the first segment. Spins for Mike Rubalcaba and Keegan Lamson slowed the early pace, but Fisher and Corliss were eventually free to duel before settling into a rhythm around the high-banked quarter-mile. Fisher was well in command with two laps to go when Scott Dragon and Stephen Donahue got together off turn one, bringing out the yellow flag again and ending Donahue’s afternoon early.

Corliss lined up alongside Fisher for a shot at the segment win, but Fisher shook free from the veteran to claim the first segment victory from the pole. Corliss held on for second with Gray third, Lessard fourth and Brown fifth.

A full-field invert put Helliwell alongside Pro All Stars Series veteran Trevor Sanborn to start the second segment. Sanborn, in his first Milk Bowl appearance, went to the point and drove away as Helliwell slipped back on the outside. Gray led the charge for the top first-segment finishers, slowly picking through traffic in a fast-paced green-flag run.

But the first-segment frontrunners could not catch Sanborn, who led from green to checkered for the second segment victory that was over in a brisk ten minutes. Lamson rebounded from his first-segment spin to finish second, with Chip Grenier rounding out the podium. Helliwell edged out Shawn Swallow for fourth. Gray finished 13th, just ahead of Corliss and Fisher after their charge through the pack.

With two segments complete, 2020 ACT Tour champ Jimmy Hebert led the overall standings with an eighth-place run in segment two. Gray and Brown, who finished 11th, were tied for second, only two points back.

White Mountain Motorsports Park weekly regular Colin Cornell ascended to the pole for the final segment, leading Jonathan Bouvrette, Jesse Switser and Taylor Hoar to the green flag. Cornell and Switser powered to the front, with Switser making a bid for the lead fifteen laps in. Switser, a Tour regular, slipped by Cornell with Justin Prescott and Brooks Clark in tow.

Grenier and Littlewood got together on the frontstretch a couple laps later, spinning to bring the yellow out on lap 18. Two laps later, as Grenier worked his way back through traffic, he got together with teen rookie Hayden Bushey, riding Bushey’s door and greenhouse into turn three as the yellow flew once again. Wreckers were summoned to pull apart the two cars under a brief red flag.

On the restart, Switser pulled ahead of a two-by-two battle for second through fifth, with stepsiblings Prescott and Hoar digging in against Clark and fifth-place Gray. With Hebert mired in 15th on the lap-20 restart, Gray was in prime position to take the Milk Bowl win in only his third start.

But the close-quarters combat came to a head on lap 36. Prescott slipped off turn two, the slip turning into a full spin down the backstretch. Brown, knocking on the door of the top five, slipped below Gray to fill the hole, but Gray turned down and across Brown’s nose, spinning in turn three and stacking up the field behind them.

The pack scrambled to the yellow flag, with Hoar and Lessard following Switser across the line. Gray, moments ago in the winning slot, sat backwards and suddenly out of contention.

Brown snaked his way through the fracas to sit fourth for the restart, with Fisher two spots back and Hebert solidly in the top ten. And while Switser shot out to the lead again, Brown went to work on the top three, dispatching Lessard and Hoar with Fisher closing in.

With Hebert seemingly stuck in seventh, and Brown and Fisher running second and third, it was between the two Factory 47 stablemates to settle the Milk Bowl outcome among themselves. Fisher pressured Brown for second, pinning him to the wall with two to go. Brown dug his heels in, hanging onto second.

Switser crossed the line first to win the third segment. But all eyes were on the second-place battle, as Brown and Fisher made contact off turn four again. Brown skidded across the finish line, spinning off Fisher’s nose as the checkered flag waved over them.

With 18 points scored across the three segments, Brown clinched the overall win by two over Fisher and three over Hebert.

Brown was acutely aware that his battle for the win came down to the two drivers, Fisher and Gray, whose cars are prepared by Brown’s new Factory 47 operation.

“I feel like Brandon kind of took himself out of contention while leading the points of the whole thing,” he said of the lap-36 contact coming to the yellow. “And we just kind of fell into place there and made it happen. I kind of felt like Brandon was going to do that, and I feel like I’m pretty close with him and can say that.

“But he just had to settle down ten percent, and I’ve been told that very many times over the years by a lot of people. It came true today.”

As for Fisher, Brown seemed to feel they had raced exactly how he wanted them to.

“Me and Kaiden raced extremely hard right there,” he said. “I felt like he definitely pinched me in the wall there off of four, coming to two to go. I was like, ‘I dunno.’ So I made sure I held him tight. He got in the rumble strips coming to the checkered, and I think it probably bottomed out on him. We met in the middle. I was pointed down the hill, and he skated up the hill, and I just stuck the throttle and I drove it across the start finish line sideways.

“I certainly wasn’t gonna lose it by lifting.”

Without a breath, the 24-year-old Brown shifted from competitor to mentor.

“I told that kid [Fisher] when we started this deal that he gives me 110 percent all the time, and if that means we’re coming down to race wins, I want 110 percent out of him,” he continued. “And we’re coming down to a championship racing together, and I want 110 percent out of him on that, too. I don’t want him to bow over for me, and I’m certainly not gonna bow backwards for him while we’re duking it out on the race track.

“Me and him are super, super close and I’m super thankful for everything him and his family do for me.”

Brown, who won his first ACT Tour feature at Thunder Road earlier this year after struggling with the track for years, did not record a segment win Sunday. He didn’t need to.

“I just ran my race in all three races,” he said, “and didn’t let shit happen, and didn’t let shit piss me off, and we pulled it off.”

Lessard, who reunited with Larue Motorsport on an off-week from his NASCAR Euro Series ride, scored fourth in the final rundown, with back-to-back defending winner Marcel Gravel fifth. Corliss, a three-time Vermont Milk Bowl winner, was sixth.

Segment winners Switser and Sanborn were ninth and 14th overall. Gray, who limped to 26th in the final segment, was scored 12th, his best result in three Milk Bowls so far.

Brown, from Center Conway, N.H., became the first driver from outside the Green Mountain State to win the Vermont Milk Bowl since Eddie MacDonald in 2014. Only six times since 2000 has the Milk Bowl been won by a driver not from Vermont; Joey Polewarczyk won in 2010, while Quebec’s Patrick Laperle won three times.

The victory entitled Brown to the pomp, circumstance, and pageantry that surrounds the state’s biggest motorsports event. First came a celebratory sip of the race’s titular beverage, followed by a milk bath from the trophy. But the most anticipated moment was the delivery of “Copper,” one of Vermont’s many dairy cows, to the frontstretch grass. While emcee Aaron Maynard tried to coax any grand plans from Brown, he remained mum on just how he would commemmorate his Vermont Milk Bowl win.

With longtime girlfriend Reilly Lanphear looking on, Brown opted for a discreet kiss on the nose.

The Vermont Milk Bowl ends Thunder Road’s season, but the Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour season still has two race dates ahead to crown a champion. Only eight points separate Brown and Fisher in the standings. Brown won earlier this year at Lee USA Speedway; Fisher won at Seekonk Speedway in June.

With his milestone win, Brown intimated from victory lane that with a couple more marquee victories, he could consider his driving career complete. Even after the heat of the moment had abated, he was still certain.

“The White Mountain [Midsummer Classic] 250 would mean just as much to me,” he said, “just because I’ve lost so many of them having a dominant race car. So that one’s gonna mean a lot to me, if I ever get it. But the Oxford 250 and the White Mountain 250, and this cat’s done full time racing.”

Still a rising star in the Super Late Model ranks, the ACT Late Model ecosystem is where Brown has enjoyed so much of his success, winning a championship in 2024, winning ten feature races since 2023, and now finding victory lane with the cars he prepares for Fisher, Gray, and others.

“ACT Late Model Racing,” he said. “There’s nothing like it.”

Unofficial Results
64th Vermont Milk Bowl presented by Northfield Savings Bank
Thunder Road International Speedbowl, Barre, Vt.
1. (51KB) Gabe Brown
2. (18VT) Kaiden Fisher
3. (58VT) Jimmy Hebert
4. (48QC) Raphaël Lessard
5. (86VT) Marcel J. Gravel
6. (66VT) Jason Corliss
7. (64VT) Christopher Pelkey
8. (88VT) Nick Sweet
9. (25NH) Jesse Switser
10. (48VT) Taylor Hoar
11. (68VT) Brooks Clark
12. (3VT) Brandon Gray
13. (04NH) Shawn Swallow
14. (51NH) Trevor Sanborn
15. (17VT) Darrell Morin
16. (91CT) Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
17. (55VT) Keegan Lamson
18. (41QC) Jonathan Bouvrette
19. (20VT) Scott Dragon
20. (48K) Kyle Streeter
21. (4NH) Jamie Swallow, Jr.
22. (15VT) Hayden Bushey
23. (9VT) Chip Grenier
24. (04VT) Justin Prescott
25. (33QC) Rémi Perreault
26. (10NH) Colin Cornell
27. (16VT) Brandon Lanphear
28. (33VT) Matt Sonnhalter
29. (73MA) Cole Littlewood
30. (26VT) Stephen Donahue
31. (25VT) Mike Rubalcaba

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