Emerling, Hedquist reflect on 2026 Modified Tour championship

In the heart of the summer, Patrick Emerling, driver of the USNEPower Motorsports Energizer 1 with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour was ‘white hot’, picking off three consecutive wins.

The first victory of the streak at Claremont Motorsports Park catapulted Emerling into the championship lead. With the completion of the third consecutive win, Emerling had built a 16-point advantage over second place. 

Emerling stayed strong, earning a podium in early August at Thompson Speedway, but things took a turn at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where the day was cut short early.  Emerling left the ‘Magic Mile’ tied atop of the championship standings with 2025 defending champion Austin Beers.

Emerling and the USNEPower Motorsports team rebounded though, picking up a Top 5 after the DNF, then powering their way to back-to-back wins before closing the season out at Thompson.

A month after the season’s final checkered flag, the veteran, who began his Modified Tour career 15 years ago with his family-owned team, is still taking in the significance of winning his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship.

“Definitely a goal since I started racing,” Emerling said to Short Track Scene. “Definitely incredible to get one and I feel like the last three years we were put in a pretty good position. From driving for the Fleetworks team and then the USNEPower team. The whole team, working with Dale Hedquist and a lot of the same guys. We have been together for the last three years and I feel like our performance has been really, really good. We just had a little bit of tough luck the previous two years and then this year we didn’t have enough bad luck to take us out of it.”

Emerling and the USNEPower Motorsports Energizer 1 team were hungry for another win at Thompson, but would come up short after leading 35 laps, but it was Teddy Hodgdon taking away the lead from Emerling and falling back to third.

Emerling, who knows firsthand what it takes to find success with a family-owned Tour Type Modified team, understands the significance of seeing drivers like Teddy Hodgdon and smaller teams achieve success on the Modified Tour. 

“That’s the magic of Modified Tour racing,” Emerling said. “Unlike at the top three NASCAR national series and even a lot of the late model series. “A lot of the teams do have comparable equipment. It’s more up to the driver, then the team. The guys are working on it and just hitting your setup and getting everything to line up on a given day and that’s the cool thing about modifieds. It’s because you can have a smaller team and figure out how to win races. That’s part of why the modifieds are special, because unlike a lot of series, you can’t just buy wins, you know, that’s what’s really cool about it.” 

For Emerling, the season started off a little slow from his perspective, but after a few races, the UNSEPower team began to build confidence and momentum. Picking up his first win of the season at Claremont, following up with wins at White Mountain Motorsports Park and at Monadnock Speedway.

“We were struggling to start the season,” Emerling said. “I think we were only six or seven races into the season and had only two top fives so far. We were showing up and we were kind of making the best out of our days, but we were struggling at the beginning of the year and all we had to do was just find our groove, right? We knew we were going to find it at some point. By about that midseason point, I think we had a third at Seekonk, which was like a little bit of a momentum boost for us. Then went on to win our first one and then kind of went from there and had our confidence going and finished off the season really strong.” 

In the offseason, NASCAR had announced a major change. The Modified Tour’s new primary tire manufacturer would be American Racer.

Emerling believes the change played a role in the early season results, based on their setups and learning the new tires.

“It was a combination between us thinking what the tires would need versus a little bit of tire inconsistency mixed in,” Emerling explained. “For example, we were really good at Martinsville, and on my last set of tires, we lost over an inch of stagger that made us too tight at the end. So there was a little bit of tire stuff going on with American Racer and we all figured that there was going to be some issues at the beginning. Then American Racer,  throughout the season they just kind of worked at it. They came out with new construction and all with their tires. I felt like mid-season and towards the end of the season, they became more consistent for us. Whether that’s a change in processes with the team or with the tire itself, and I think probably a little bit of both.” 

After a slow start, that momentum began to build early in the summer.

After Emerling’s winning streak in July, Emerling earned a third place finish at Thompson in early August. From there, Modified Tour headed to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where he had the championship lead by 13 points over defending champion Austin Beers.

That day at New Hampshire, Emerling would start 13th, but his day ended dramatically on Lap 3. His left-front tire was knocked off the bead after contact and had no control heading into Turn 1, riding the outside wall, ending his day very early.

“That finish at Loudon was definitely a bummer and it took a little bit of wind out of the sails,” Emerling said. “We kept at it though and kept doing our thing. Even though we finished dead last, we didn’t let it get in our heads or anything and kept at it.

For the driver out Orchard Park, New York, Emerling has always appreciated and loved the challenge the Modified Tour offers, and knows he can’t take this championship for granted.

“Ultimately, just trying to win one of these races is really hard, let alone to win a championship,” Emerling explained. “That’s been a goal since I’ve started running the tour and earlier on, I ran full time a few times and didn’t have success back then or much success. When I ran the series when I was with our family team it was a western New York based team. We didn’t really run full-time too much for a while, then we did the full-time effort in 2021 and we finished second. Then after that, raced part-time in 2022 and 2023. Then in 2024,  had the opportunity to drive for the Fleetworks team, which was the same group of guys as now and it’s just incredible. Just incredible to be teamed up with this group and it was definitely something special, given the right opportunity, it was definitely a big goal.” 

The relationship between Emerling and the now USNEpower Motorsports Energizer team started originally in 2024, when the team was Fleetworks, with Dale Hedquist the crew chief of the team. 

Hedquist, well known around the Modified Tour garage, being a part of the Tinio Racing team, helping Dave Sapienza’s team, and then being a part of Jonathan McKennedy’s Modified Tour 2022 championship as his crew chief. 

Looking back at the championship night at Thompson on World Series weekend, Hedquist knew what this championship run meant to the 33 year old veteran of Emerling and could tell what that night meant to his driver.

“I was the first one in the window when he was pulling up after the burnout, to just see the relief in his face was pretty special,” Hedquist said. “So we all have the same goal to be champion or be the best and win. That’s what the sport makes us do and to see the relief that he had in his face and it was just joy. ‘Okay, now we did it.’ And you can’t explain it. You can’t describe it. It’s kind of a surreal moment for sure.”

Hedquist was put in charge of the then Fleetworks team Tour Type Modified program as crew chief, and the owner of the team wanted a driver.

“I was tasked by Rich Gautreau to start a tour team and he asked ‘who we were going to get for a driver? Who’s going to drive it,’” Hedquist explained. “I lobbied pretty heavily for Patrick (Emerling). Patrick and I had talked quite a bit about it and I guess all the moons aligned there for a little while and made it happen. And yeah, here we are. We’re going into our fourth year and have been very successful doing it.”

Since then, David Miller, principal of USNEPower and Emerling, launched the USNEPower Motorsports team at the end of the 2025 season, with Hedquist remaining the crew chief of the race team.

Emerling and the Hedquist led team have won every year since 2024 at least twice per season and finished in the Top 5 in the championship standings each season so far and now getting a championship together in 2026. 

Hedquist knew the potential in the team from the start, and now at the end of 2026, with a championship, it’s been a dream.

“When we first started this team, we were kind of an underdog a little bit and we weren’t supposed to be able to compete with some of the top level teams of the Whelen Modified Tour, I feel by some people,” Hedquist said. “That’s one of the things that I always preach to all of the guys here though, we’re not going to get outworked. We’re just going to keep our nose down and we’re going to work harder. To see it come full circle and really race for a championship in all three years of the existence of the team, but this year we were a  legitimate championship contender, from probably the second half of the season, maybe a little bit before that, but it was almost surreal at times.”

The relationship between Hedquist and Emerling has been special over the years, and their accomplishments together have made those moments even sweeter. 

“He’s the man and we’re really, really close friends and we talk every day and just were super pumped,” Emerling said about Hedquist. “We were able to get the job done together and I know he was really excited. I’m just really proud of him and the whole team. The way we ran this year and the way we’ve been running, we’re going to try to continue to do what we did there. We’re really good friends and we just really enjoy racing and we just have a lot of fun racing together. So it makes it really special.”

For Hedquist, as a crew chief and in charge of managing his team, he was an advocate for the tire change for the Modified Tour.

“I was excited when they said that we were going to go to a different tire manufacturer,” Hedquist said. “Not that I had a problem with Hoosier or any of the guys at Hoosier. We get along great with those guys and we had good relationships over the years with them and we still do, I feel.”

Hedquist was candid about why he supported the change for the Modified Tour, even for himself who’s been around the tour for over a decade.

“The competitive edge that it gave us this year was huge,” Hedquist said. “I said that openly to a couple of crew chiefs. I said, ‘Your 12 to 15 year old notebooks are no longer in play. Now we’re going to race heads up and let’s figure it out.’ And some of those guys didn’t run the whole season, unfortunately. I wish they did, and I’m not saying that we would’ve beat them or whatever, but I wanted to beat some of those guys heads up without a notebook or have the shot to beat them heads up without a notebook.”

After a season with five wins, 11 Top 5s, and 14 Top 10s in 16 races on the Modified Tour, the USNEPower Motorsports Energizer 1 will remain a force with any Tour Type Modified racing in 2027.

“We’re working on gaining on our current program and just keep building,” Emerling said with confidence. “I think we’ve been getting a little bit better year after year and that’s our thing. We’re going to plan on running quite a few races next year and we have the Modified Tour, and just keep at it and keep on working to improve our program.”

Looking ahead to the 2027 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour schedule, Emerling finds similarities in the schedule to when he first started out with the tour.

“There’s a lot of Thompsons and Staffords like back in the 2000s and 2010s,” Emerling said. I personally am a big fan of the broader footprint, whether we go race modifieds down south like New Smyrna, but it’s also a business, and it has to make sense and it has to make sense for all the teams. Northeast base schedule, we’ll have some fun.” 

Emerling is especially excited about the one specific addition, a return to his hometrack, just about 30 minutes away from Orchard Park, New York.

“The big addition, Lancaster Speedway,” Emerling said. “That’s a western New York track  and that’s one of my home tracks,” Emerling said. “Just really excited to get back there. Thunder Road’s a cool new one. A lot of familiar tracks and we’re looking forward to getting back to them.”

Patrick Emerling and the Dale Hedquist led USNEPower Motorsports Energizer 1 team will start their defense of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour title April, 4th 2027 at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park.