Corliss outduels Gray for third ACT Labor Day Classic checkers

About the only thing unfamiliar about Jason Corliss’ winning drive in the EastRise Credit Union Labor Day Classic was the car number.

Corliss prevailed in a late-race battle with Brandon Gray to earn his third Labor Day Classic win and his eighth career Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour victory in the event’s 48th running at Thunder Road International Speedbowl.

And while the win was another feather in Corliss’ crowded Thunder Road cap, it also marked the second win of the summer for the Hartwell Motorsports team’s No. 91.

Corliss was thrust into the ACT headlines in August when the Connecticut-based Hartwell team, fresh off their first Tour win with driver Jake Johnson, announced that Corliss instead would finish out the season in pursuit of an owners’ points title. Still in pursuit of a fifth “King of the Road” crown at Thunder Road, Corliss had finished fifth at the Barre, Vt. bullring in May in his only ACT start of the year.

The Danville, Vt. racer finished tenth in his first start for the Hartwells, but limped to 20th and 18th-place finishes in their next two races. For the Labor Day Classic, though, Corliss brought out his usual Burnett Motorsports mount with the Hartwells’ car number on the doors instead.

Fellow multi-time Thunder Road track champion Nick Sweet asserted himself at the point in the early laps, but Gray found his way to the lead just before a scheduled fuel stop fifty laps into the 200-lap contest. Sweet overpowered Gray on the restart, but the yellow flew only eleven laps later as ACT points leader Gabe Brown slowed on the backstretch with brake issues. Brown, whose team had scrambled to swap a blown engine after practice, was forced to the pits for service.

Sweet held the lead through a lap-67 wreck that eliminated Erick Sands, but Gray would get past on lap 74. Second to Corliss in the track standings with a pair of feature wins, Gray hoped to add a Tour victory to his resume to close out a solid season.

Trouble for Brooks Clark on lap 122 bunched the field back up, and a blown tire for Justin Prescott ten laps later put Corliss at Gray’s door for a lap-132 restart. The two squared off with Gray hanging onto the lead, but Corliss turned up the wick with 50 to go, drawing even with his weekly rival.

Gray’s tenacity kept him inches ahead of Corliss as the two battled door to door over the next forty laps. But contact within the final ten laps separated the two, with Corliss pulling ahead to take the lead.

There was no looking back as Corliss led the final eight circuits to score his first Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour win of 2026, successfully defending his victory in last year’s Labor Day Classic.

Only one of Corliss’ eight Tour wins, a 2021 triumph at White Mountain Motorsports Park, has not come at Thunder Road. Earlier this season, Corliss passed Phil Scott for the most overall Late Model wins at the “Nation’s Site of Excitement” since the platform’s introduction in 1992.

After leading 120 laps in all, Gray held on for second, with fans in the hills above loudly choosing sides in the late-race duel. Gray’s runner-up finish was his second consecutive second-place berth, having finished behind Johnson and the Hartwell operation at WMMP in August.

Brown, despite his mid-race brake issues, drove back to a convincing third-place finish in a car still wrapped in the Kyle Busch tribute livery he drove to victory at Oxford Plains Speedway.

Jimmy Hebert’s first ACT race since last year’s Labor Day Classic ended with a fourth-place run, while Riverside Speedway winner Jesse Switser rounded out the top five.

Former Thunder Road track champions Kaiden Fisher and Christopher Pelkey were sixth and seventh in the final running order, while Taylor Hoar notched her first career Tour top-ten finish in eighth. Quebecer Jonathan Bouvrette was ninth, while early leader Sweet soldiered home in tenth.

Brown’s recovery from the day’s hardships bolstered his championship efforts with only three races remaining to decide the Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour title.

The Labor Day Classic punctuated a four-race stretch including two rescheduled dates from earlier in the season. Scheduled off-weeks separate the upcoming Fall Foliage 200 at WMMP and October’s Vermont Milk Bowl, where Tour teams are obligated to compete to maintain their full-time status toward the season points fund. The season concludes with back-to-back features at Lee USA Speedway and Seekonk Speedway.

Brown won at Lee earlier this year; Fisher won at Seekonk. With Jesse Switser almost 80 points behind in third, the title race comes down to two close collaborators. Fisher is one of Brown’s Factory 47 setup clients, a relationship that kept Brown from finding himself on the losing end of contact at Oxford two weeks ago.

With points hard to come by and big money on the line, some difficult on-track decisions may be in store in the weeks to come.

Unofficial Results
Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour | 48th EastRise Credit Union Labor Day Classic
Thunder Road International Speedbowl, Barre, Vt.
1. (91CT) Jason Corliss
2. (00VT) Brandon Gray
3. (47NH) Gabe Brown
4. (58VT) Jimmy Hebert
5. (25NH) Jesse Switser
6. (18VT) Kaiden Fisher
7. (64VT) Christopher Pelkey
8. (48VT) Taylor Hoar
9. (41QC) Jonathan Bouvrette
10. (88VT) Nick Sweet
11. (04NH) Shawn Swallow
12. (68VT) Brooks Clark
13. (16VT) Brandon Lanphear
14. (7ME) Dylan Payea
15. (9VT) Chip Grenier
16. (73MA) Cole Littlewood
17. (33QC) Rémi Perreault
18. (71VT) Jesse Laquerre
19. (29NH) Aaron Fellows
20. (4NH) Jamie Swallow, Jr.
21. (86VT) Marcel J. Gravel
22. (04VT) Justin Prescott
23. (02WP) Geoff Rollins
24. (99VT) Cody Blake
25. (7VT) Cooper Bouchard
26. (36NH) Erick Sands
27. (0VT) Scott Dragon

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