Fisher punctuates ACT championship with Seekonk Haunted Hundred victory

Kaiden Fisher only needed a few positions at Seekonk Speedway to secure his first Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour championship. In the closing laps of Saturday’s Haunted Hundred, he made sure he got all of them.

Fisher outgunned home-track hero David Darling in the final ten laps of the season finale, punctuating his first touring championship with his fourth ACT win of 2026.

And Gabe Brown, Fisher’s teammate and title rival, was left to balance the heartbreak of his runner-up result with the joy of a greater victory.

A greater victory that Fisher was quick to credit his mentor for.

“All year, he’s put his all into my cars,” the Shelburne, Vt. teen said of Brown. “Don’t matter if it’s 2 a.m., or 4 a.m., or 7 in the morning, he’s there working on the cars, if they need to be worked on. Gabe does a really good job.”

A bum fuel pump in the final laps of last Sunday’s Oktoberfest 150 at Lee USA Speedway had turned the tables on the title race, with Brown’s scant eight-point lead flipped to a 46-point deficit heading to a track that has long frustrated the Granite Stater. Fisher, who won June’s Spring Green at the “Cement Palace,” only needed a top-ten run to thwart anything Brown could cook up.

Nevertheless, the 2024 Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour titlist put himself fourth on the starting grid, while Fisher’s winner’s handicap relegated him to 13th for the start of the short season finale.

Rising Vermont star Brandon Gray earned the pole alongside Rémi Perreault, but quickly shook free of the Quebecer with the green flag waving. Darling, the Seekonk native and multi-time Pro Stock track champion, diced through the field, challenging Brian Whalley and Jonathan Bouvrette for the top five as Ryan Kuhn was booted back through the field.

Gray, who also receives setup support from Brown’s Factory 47 program, was still in command when the yellow flew on lap 22 for Brian Norman’s turn-two spin. Brown shadowed Perreault in third, with Darling up to fourth. Fisher, patiently working from mid-pack, was up to eighth.

Darling began pressuring Brown on the restart, climbing to third as Fisher worked over Bouvrette for fifth. Perreault, putting in one of his best career runs in the United States, ceded second to Darling as Fisher took over third on a restart. At halfway, Gray still clung to the lead with Darling and Fisher looming larger and larger. Brown was shuffled back to sixth, out of the pocket for the points lead.

A piece of debris just out of the racing groove drew the attention of officials, who prompted a lap-60 caution to retrieve the part. Darling fired off fast on the restart, powering from the outside to the lead over Gray as Brown tested the high line to take back fourth. Gray held the inside line on Darling, but the local veteran pinched Gray down toward the curb to hold the point.

Gray was battling back inside of Darling on lap 67 when slight contact unsettled his white Chevrolet, sending the rookie around in turn two. The field entirely dodged Gray’s stopped car, but the fairytale run for the Vermont native was over.

Darling, on the other hand, was exactly where he wanted to be, fending off Fisher as Brown ran third. But before he could get too far away, a multi-car crash slowed the race, with top rookie Geoff Rollins taking heavy front-end damage and Bobby Pelland III limping to the pits to end his afternoon early.

With his first career ACT win within grasp, Darling took the green flag again on lap 78. But Fisher kept pressuring the hometown star. And on lap 88, Fisher got to Darling’s inside.

Fisher and Darling dueled for two laps, with Darling eventually slipping high and Fisher inching ahead. Brown and Erick Sands joined the fray as well, turning up the heat on Darling as the yellow flew for Jesse Switser’s turn-four spin with eight laps remaining.

Fisher and Darling took off on the restart, but the one-two Factory 47 punch was too much for Darling, who settled into third with Brown in pursuit of Fisher. Though a win would not be enough to tip the title toward Brown, a checkered flag would soothe the frustration of the last two weeks.

But Fisher gapped the field in the final eight-lap dash, crossing the line 0.752 seconds ahead of second place to score his fourth Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour win of 2026.

Even starting in the middle of the pack, Fisher knew he had a car to beat.

“In practice all day, I knew I had a pretty good car,” he said. “Just gotta stay clean. I knew I had to finish twelfth or better to win the championship, basically, if Gabe had a perfect day. So I tried to stay above twelfth all day, and worked my way up to the front.

“And once I got there, I just tried to keep the fenders on it while taking the lead, and made it happen.”

Making the win that much more special was that it came over a driver who celebrated his hundredth win at the “Action Track of the East” earlier this year.

“I definitely know [Darling]’s fast here,” Fisher said. “Always up front in the four races that I’ve run here. It was fun racing with him, and hopefully I’ll get to race him some more next year.”

Second place was not what Brown had in mind, either in the race or in the final championship standings. But the 24-year-old could appreciate the success of what he had created over the past few months.

“Just pretty bittersweet day regardless,” he said, “because it’s my hard work, no matter what. Sure, I want to bring home the championship trophy and the paycheck, but I’m really proud of Kaiden and thankful that he’s carrying the banner for Factory 47. Just a really good day overall.”

Darling held on for third after a late-race charge by Erick Sands, who settled for fourth after back-to-back Haunted Hundred wins in 2024 and 2025. Derek Gluchacki, racing the car he spent crew-chiefing for rookie driver Ayla Martin this year, made up ground in the final laps to finish fifth.

Perreault’s outside-pole start ended in a sixth-place finish, a career best for the driver who has earned three of his four ACT top-ten finishes at Seekonk. Fellow Quebecer Bouvrette was seventh, ahead of Thunder Road International Speedbowl weekly racer Taylor Hoar and Whalley. Gray, still despondent over late-race contact that cost him a win in the Vermont Milk Bowl, drove back to tenth in the final laps.

It was a banner day for Factory 47, the setup shop Brown established over the offseason as he struck out on his own after years working for Dale Shaw Race Cars in his home town of Center Conway, N.H. Not only did Fisher and Brown finish 1-2, but Fisher and Gray combined to lead well over half the race.

“Me and Matt [Morrill] have worked really hard for three, four years here on the ACT Tour,” Brown said, “and have found a good baseline, not only for ourselves, but a lot of other people now. It’s really cool to be able to support that amount of people, and see them running well. Erick, he ran really well today. He’s taken our baseline and tweaked it to his own likings.”

But it all starts with Brown’s around-the-clock work ethic.

“Obviously Kaiden’s car I work on full-time,” he added. “Every ounce of the work out of my shop, like, I haul it to the track, I do the vinyl, everything you have to do, I do.”

The effort has created a dilemma for Brown. While Brown is still young and wants to race, he understands the greater complexity of racing against a growing customer base.

“My dad wants to, really wants to come back ACT racing full time,” he said. “And to be honest with you, I could care less to do any points racing ever in my life again. Obviously it’s cool to race for that prestigious trophy and all that money, but I’m also looking forward to supporting my customer base. I really want to pick and choose next year, where we run. I considered running Thunder Road weekly next year, so I can race on Thursdays and be with my customers on the weekends.

“We’ll just see where this winter takes us. We have a lot of cool things planned for next year.”

That likely continues with Fisher, who at nineteen is the youngest American-Canadian Tour champion dating back to the series’ roots as a NASCAR-backed venture in the late 1970s.

“It’s really great and cool to be a part of it,” Fisher said of his partnership with Brown. “It was kind of this winter that it came along. I brought my cars up to him and he started working on them.”

Fisher, who finished eighth and sixth in his first two ACT Tour seasons with four top tens each year, made the leap to series star with Brown’s guidance, finishing the season with four wins, ten top-five finishes and twelve top tens in fourteen starts. After winning his first ACT feature last year at Thunder Road, Fisher’s wins this year all came on the road—at Autodrome Montmagny in Quebec, at Lee last weekend, and his season sweep at Seekonk.

“It definitely helped me as a driver, in learning how to race all these different tracks,” Fisher said of his ongoing education. “I used to be good at Thunder Road and like a couple others, and now I feel like I can go almost anywhere and win with Gabe.”

The diversity of the schedule is something Fisher has come to appreciate. “ACT is a great tour that goes to a bunch of different tracks,” he added. “None of them are really the same. Some have low grip, some have high grip, some have banking, some have opposite direction banking. Just a lot of fun racing.”

Fisher, dubbed “The Tropical Storm” in his formative years, follows in the footsteps of father Jamie “The Hurricane” Fisher, who for years wheeled the same red-and-yellow colors and car number under the ACT banner. The elder Fisher won a Thunder Road track championship in 2003 and four ACT Tour features, all before the younger Fisher was born. Kaiden repeated his father’s feat with the 2024 Thunder Road track championship. Sunday’s win gives him more wins on the Tour than his father.

And at only nineteen, there is plenty of time for Kaiden Fisher to add to the family legacy.

“It’s really cool to just be able to win a race,” he said. “Now I’ve won four of them. Glad to pass my father and have how many wins he has.”

Fisher’s trademark intensity gave way to joy. “I’m sure we’ll talk about that later.”

Unofficial Results
Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour | Haunted Hundred
Seekonk Speedway, Seekonk, Mass.
1. (18VT) Kaiden Fisher
2. (47NH) Gabe Brown
3. (52MA) David Darling
4. (36NH) Erick Sands
5. (91MA) Derek Gluchacki
6. (33QC) Rémi Perreault
7. (41QC) Jonathan Bouvrette
8. (48VT) Taylor Hoar
9. (02NH) Brian Whalley
10. (00VT) Brandon Gray
11. (62MA) Ryan Kuhn
12. (22RI) Mark Jenison
13. (29NH) Aaron Fellows
14. (98MA) Ryan Flood
15. (38RI) Connor Souza
16. (35MA) Chase Belcher
17. (2CT) Derryck Anderson
18. (08RI) Richie Murray
19. (64RI) Devin Deshaies
20. (91CT) Jason Corliss
21. (73MA) Cole Littlewood
22. (25NH) Jesse Switser
23. (31CT) Travis Hydar
24. (14RI) Rey Lovelace
25. (02WP) Geoff Rollins
26. (12CT) Brian Norman
27. (88ME) Seth Drown
28. (4MA) Brendan Labelle
29. (12RI) Bobby Pelland III
30. (30RI) Jacob Burns
31. (04MA) Brody Wakefield

If you like what you read here, become a Short Track Scene Patreon and support short track journalism!

Read more Short Track Scene:

• As redevelopment begins, a look back at Beech Ridge’s legacy
• Despite new aspirations, racing remains part of Austin Theriault’s agenda
• How Bubba Pollard got to the Oxford 250 after all