Coming into Saturday night’s twin 75-lap features at South Boston Speedway, Landon Pembelton, winner of the previous event, had never won back-to-back races. He has now won three straight after sweeping the night.
For the first time in his career, Pembelton started from the pole in Race 1 alongside Brandon Lopez. Pembelton launched on the initial start and never looked back, leading flag-to-flag en route to victory over fellow championship contender Trevor Ward.
“It makes it easy on me for sure,” Pembelton told FloRacing. “We’ve been hitting on all eight pretty good so far and the last couple weekends it’s been really good.”
Looking ahead to Race 2, Pembelton felt his car was close.
“Just gonna tinker with it,” Pembelton said. “I was really close right there. Just needed a little bit of turn there in the middle, but we were really close.”
Pembelton drew a 10 in the invert, meaning the two championship leaders, Ward and Pembelton, would start ninth and 10th for the second feature. John Goin and Andrew Grady lined up on the front row.
Pembelton sliced through the field like a hot knife through butter, charging from 10th to pass Andrew Grady for the lead within the opening 15 laps. Ward’s path forward was not as easy as he fought tooth and nail just to break into the top five.
Meanwhile, the third member of the championship battle, Peyton Sellers, suffered a mechanical issue with 25 laps remaining, recording his first DNF of 2026.
With no serious challenge out front, Pembelton cruised to his third consecutive victory.
“You can’t dream of cars like that,” Pembelton said. “They don’t come along very often. I feel like we were just as good right there as we were two weekends ago. We’ve got to take care of it. It’s really good right now. We just gotta make sure we stay good and we’ll be in position for a good track championship hunt. Just keep putting the pressure on them and eventually they’ll fold.”
Prior to Saturday night, Trevor Ward held a seven-point advantage in the championship standings. After Pembelton’s two victories, combined with a runner-up finish and a fifth-place result from Ward, the two are now tied atop the standings. Pembelton owns the tiebreaker with four wins to Ward’s two.
Fourteen-year-old Connor Weddell finished third in Race 1, his fifth consecutive third-place finish, and backed it up with a runner-up effort in Race 2.
“I was getting real tired of finishing third there for a minute,” Weddell told FloRacing. “Just a super good night. No matter what we do, we always run in the top three and that’s a super good accomplishment for here. We’re all racing for Rowdy tonight and we all work really hard for this.”
Race 1
- 0 Landon Pembelton
- 77W Trevor Ward
- 8W Conner Weddell
- 26 Peyton Sellers
- 6L Brandon Lopez
- 6M Bobby McCarty
- 77S Blake Stallings
- 16 Sam Butler
- 1G Andrew Grady
- 90 John Goin
- 08 Carson Haislip
- 12P Zach Peregoy
Race 2
- 0 Landon Pembelton
- 8W Conner Weddell
- 77S Blake Stallings
- 6M Bobby McCarty
- 77W Trevor Ward
- 1G Andrew Grady
- 16 Sam Butler
- 90 John Goin
- 6L Brandon Lopez
- 08 Carson Haislip
- 12P Zach Peregoy
- 26 Peyton Sellers
