In the world of sports, athletes or teams get red hot, where they are performing well and consistent. Then when someone is white hot, they are unbeatable and things just go their way. After winning a third consecutive NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour race, Patrick Emerling and the USNE Power are looking white hot at the moment.
After 10 races, Emerling leads the championship standings over 2025 champion Austin Beers by 16 points. Emerling on the season has three wins at Claremont, White Mountain Motorsports Park, and now Monadnock. Along with the three victories, Emerling has recorded six top-five finishes and nine top-10s through the first 10 races.
As we head down the stretch and the championship fight goes on, Emerling is enjoying this momentum and hot streak.
“It’s really cool. That was our goal. Running like how we’ve been running, is always our goal, right? We’re always looking to improve our program and I feel like the last couple of years, I feel like we’ve had stretches that we ran really good quite a few times,” Emerling explains “we did start out the season a little bit slow. You know, switching to a new tire manufacturer this year and learning.”
A challenge for many across the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour has been the learning curve of the series changing from Hoosiers to American Racers. Emerling says though, things are improving as the drivers, series and American Racer work to find the right combination to deliver a strong racing product continuously.
“I feel like American Racer has really worked on like the inconsistency stuff and we as a team were able to kind of figure it out a little bit too on top of that and make some small changes to our car,” Emerling says “we think that kind of helped with the tires and a lot of it’s too, is just kind of sticking with what we know and what we were able to do. We went to a couple tracks where we knew we were going to be pretty good at and we were able to capitalize on having a really good car.”
For the veterans of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, they are always looking for the right feel and level of comfort with how their cars are handling. With the change to the American Racers, good cars would still be good on either manufacturing brand, and with the team hitting on the set ups correctly, the hard work is paying off.
“The tires are a little bit different, but a good car on Hoosiers should likely be a pretty good car on American Racer tires. But we also had to figure them out a little bit,” Emerling explains “earlier on in the season, we kind of had ourselves a little bit spun out at times because we were bolting up new tires and going slower at times, and we were kind of struggling. There are some growing pains. They introduced a new manufacturer of the series, so there were some growing pains there.”
Emerling says though it seems like things are getting better with what to expect with the set of tires each time they hit the track and feels himself and the USNEPower team are figuring it out.
“I feel like over the past several races, I feel like they’ve improved to where you know the stagger’s been easier to hit. We can bolt up a set of stickers and we’re going to do our fastest time in practice. So the grip levels are more consistent between tires and stuff like that. So, being able to figure out what the tires were going to do definitely helped.”
Last fall, at Seekonk Speedway in Seekonk, Massachusetts, it was announced about the new partnership between Emerling and USNEPower. That partnership has grown, and has put USNEPower in victory lane multiple times now.
“It’s been an incredible partnership. We’re grateful to have USNEPower on board and everything they do for our sport. David Miller and USNEpower. Yeah, basically everything they do for the sport. They really support racing and it’s a really good thing,” an appreciative Emerling explains.
As we head into the final six races of the season, some of the biggest races are ahead, including two trips to Thompson, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and the return of the NASCAR Whelen Tour Modifieds to Stafford Motor Speedway.
Emerling is the defending winner of Thompson’s summer NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event, having won the race in both 2024 and 2025 and is wanting to improve from Icebreaker weekend in April.
“The summer Thompson race, we’ve had some pretty good cars with the wins. So we are really looking forward to that one. Then with Loudon coming up, that’s a really good track for us and I feel like we had the car to beat last year and we were running up front and we got wrecked,” Emerling explains, so really looking forward to going back to those tracks. And, um, yeah, Thompson, you know, we’re going to have Thompson twice. We have some good tracks for us coming up.”
While the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway to join the NASCAR Weekend, Emerling will be an entry in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for the EJP 175. Emerling has made three starts on the season with NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, and enjoys the opportunities to go run in the top NASCAR series.
“I’ve had the opportunity to race for RSS Racing in the O’Reilly Series, I love Modified racing, I love racing in general. When you get to do that in those series up there it’s a little bit different. Everything’s more sponsored driven, it’s definitely a lot tougher ball game as far as that goes, but it’s also a ton of fun too,” Emerling says “being able to race the modifieds though, You’re running them once, twice a week all summer, so it’s where the opportunity lies, and I’m going to have a lot of fun either way.”
With now six races left in the season, the championship points remain a tight battle for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. As mentioned, Emerling holds a small lead over defending champion Austin Beers by 16 points, 2022 Tour champion McKennedy in third, only 36 points behind, and Stephen Kopcik who won back-to-back races earlier in 2026, is 39 points behind Emerling.
Heading into these final couple of months with the tour, Emerling knows him and the USNEPower team just need to keep on doing what they have been doing.
“The whole first part of the year, I feel like we’ve been running right where we think we need to run, and we have stayed in the game, right? We finished sixth and fifth and seventh and we had one particular like, not so good where we finished, race at Thompson, where we finished, what, 13th, but other than that, we’ve been close,” Emerling says.
Emerling knows he is capable of closing out a strong season, as he has been close before, but things just didn’t go his way.
“We have to stay in our rhythm and do what we know we can do and we just have to stay consistent unlike the last couple years. I feel like we were the guys to beat,” Emerling said. “But then we just had issues you know, whether it was part failures that took us out of contention or got wrecked a few times. So we just have to stay consistent and do our thing. We need luck to be on our side and we’ll be good to go.”
Emerling is especially appreciative of his team and crew around him, as they continue to piece together a special season.
“We have plenty of amazing partners, but USNEPower, my crew chief Dale Hedquist does an incredible job running the team and that’s the reason, that’s the big reason for our success and very excited to finish off the season,” a confident Emerling says.
Patrick Emerling and the USNEPower team with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour head to Thompson, Connecticut to do battle at Thompson Motor Speedway next Wednesday, August 4th. Emerling will look to make it 4-in-row and extend his points lead, as he is the defending summer winners from 2024 and 2025.
That race airs live on FloRacing.
