Jake Crum won the SMART Modified Tour finale at North Wilkesboro with a clutch win to clinch the championship.
Crum started midpack and the lowest of the playoff drivers. Crum entered the race tied with Ryan Newman, three points behind points leader Danny Bohn. Newman started first and led the first lap to score a crucial bonus point. Bohn was fast and ran well the whole night as well.
Crum had worked his way up to the front by the midway point, but his title hopes almost vanished when James Civali spun going for the lead in front of him with 24 laps to go, taking out Kyle Bonsignore and Carter McMurray. Crum was in second after the crash, but race leader Luke Baldwin pitted, giving him the lead.
Crum ran away with the lead on the restart, and took his third win on the season to win the SMART Modified Tour championship by 3 points.
“Yeah, we had a long way to come,” Crum said in victory lane. “I just tried to, as Justin calls it, stay in the helmet. I tried to be as calm as I could the whole race. I knew the car was really good. I could see Newman coming back to us. I didn’t care what everybody else was doing. Obviously, we were racing Newman and Danny Bohn, really. I saw him coming back to us, and I was just kind of biding my time, taking what I could get. Fortunately for us, we paid off tonight.
“I know Civali was holding on and blocking for everything he had, and I don’t blame him, but I was just sitting there kind of biding my time because I knew one of them was getting ready to get hooked in the fence. I just needed to dodge that one, so I knew it was coming, and it happened. But luckily, we were on the right side of that, and here we are.”
Crum ends the season with three wins, four top 5’s nine top 10’s, and now he has a SMART Tour title to add to his impressive resume.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve honestly won some big races until this year. It’s been a long time since I’ve won a championship, and back in 2008, 2009, we were able to win the UARA championship and then Martinsville back-to-back years, and so, hell, I don’t even know how long ago that’s been. Here we are with another championship, three wins on the season. Annabelle’s going to win the [Carolina Crate Modified Tour] championship next week in Orange County, and it’s just going to be a dream here.”
Newman finished runner-up in the race and Bohn finished third, tying in the points for second place. Bohn won the tiebreaker with his three wins to finish the season second in the points.
Bohn isn’t hanging his head though, and says he takes solace being the “deserving champion.”
“I mean, honestly, this is the first race I’ve ever finished here – my third start,” Bohn said after the race. “This morning if you said, ‘hey man, you’re going to run third tonight,’ I would have said you’re crazy, but, just a hell of a year. I mean, if you add up the points, we won. But the way that the playoff deal worked, and then Orange County, you know, I think I lost 15, 20 points there, with that crash, so to even have a shot, you know, happy about that, happy about the run, regardless.
“Hell of a year. We deserve to be the champions, I feel like, but, just, not the way the playoffs work, so. Thank you to all these guys, everybody that helps us, it’s been, like I said, a hell of a year, and we’ll get them next year.”
Newman’s runner-up in North Wilkesboro can encapsulate his season, as it’s the first time since running the SMART Tour full-time that he has gone winless. He has had race winning pace several times throughout the year, and made a late charge during the last 20 laps of this race, but came up just short of the win and the title.
“We’re dejected,” Newman said. “I think as a team we’re dejected, me especially. I hold the organization at a pretty high standard. I wish we could have been one spot better. We got held up on a couple of restarts. We weren’t quite good enough there at the end. If I could have had some track position, I think I could have held [Crum] off. I’m sure he would have used me up too. But congratulations to those guys.
“We had three races this year where we had a flat right front during the race and cost us a whole bunch of track position. That didn’t change anything in this three race playoff, but I think we proved that Modified racing makes for pretty damn good racing.”
Sean McElearney and Jacob Perry rounded out the top five.
The full finishing results can be viewed below.
Friendly Tire 99
North Wilkesboro Speedway
October 17, 2026
1. 1JC Jake Crum
2. 2 Ryan Newman
3. 25 Danny Bohn
4. 15 Sean McElearney
5. 21CT Jacob Perry
6. 17 Patrick Emerling
7. 02 Joey Coulter IV
8. 48 Jonny Kievman
9. 24 Jonathan Brown
10. 1 Burt Myers
11. 04 Brandon Ward
12. 7VA Luke Baldwin
13. 16VA Carson Haislip
14. 51 Justin Bonsignore
15. 21NY Jimmy Blewett
16. 39 Joey Braun
17. 99 Paulie Hartwig III
18. 2B J.R. Bertuccio
19. 14 Austin McDaniel
20. 92 Brody Jones
21. 5H Chris Hettinger
22. 01 Melissa Fifield
23. 79 James Civali
24. 22 Kyle Bonsignore
25. 40 Carter McMurray
26. 21 Jimmy Wallace
27. 5 Tom Buzze
28. 72 Bud McIntyre
29. 18 Daniel Yates
30. 3 Craig Young
31. 77 William Lambros
