Kyle Steckly survived a series of late race restarts to score the victory in Wednesday night’s Masters of the Pros at Owosso Speedway in Michigan.
Steckly, a multi-time ASA STARS National Tour winner, made the race-winning pass on Chase Pinsonneault on the 114th lap of the 200-lap Pro Late Model race. Pinsonneault, who had led every lap prior, ended up falling to third during a lengthy mid-race green flag run, which allowed Tyler Lupton to move to second. Lupton challenged Steckly for the lead multiple times during the final restarts of the race inside the final 40 laps – but Steckly drove away from the field to win the prestigious green jacket at Owosso.
“This one’s special,” Steckly said in victory lane. “First U.S. win with the 22 Racing boys, who I grew up with going to the track with my dad, and now me racing. It’s just been so much fun. We had a really fast car this weekend. What a race … Those couple restarts there just made it exciting and made me work for it.”
A restart with 15 laps to go shuffled up the final finishing order when Lupton, Blake Rowe and Pinsonneault raced three-wide for position. After a little contact, Rowe prevailed in the battle to take over the runner-up position.
Rowe had been involved in multi-car pileup on the 52nd lap of the race, dropping back as far as 16th.
“Not the run we wanted to have today,” Rowe said. “Proud of the effort. Honestly, just a one job by my whole crew getting this thing back together enough to still be able to make a little speed.”
Lupton finished third while Pinsonneault was fourth and Keelan Harvick finished fifth. Billy VanMeter rebounded from early race electrical issues to finish in sixth, with Dan Leeck, Kevin Harvick, Chase Burda, and Weston Marthaler rounding out the top-10.
“I thought we were getting a little bit tight,” Pinsonneault said, explaining why the handling of his car went away in the second half of the race. “Thought when the sun went down, we were maybe going to want to free it up a little bit with the grip, but it just wasn’t the direction we needed to go.”
The most notable incident in the race took place on a lap 52 restart attempt when Lupton missed a shift, triggering a multicar wreck which collected Blake Rowe, Austin Hull, Michael Simko, Evan Shotko, Chloe Mazzagatti, Jayden Johnston, Kevin Cremonesi, and Gabrielle Grigsby. Simko, Hull, Johnson and Shotko were sidelined for the remainder of the race in the incident.
Lap 52/200: Another multicar incident on the restart as Tyler Lupton appears to miss a shift on the restart, triggering a pileup behind him. Caution is out. pic.twitter.com/cJQi6SwOsa
The Masters of the Pros was the fourth race of the 2026 Turn One CRA Pro Series. The next event for the series will take place on Friday, July 31, at Birch Run Speedway in Michigan.
Marquis comes from St. Charles, Maryland and has a widespread background in journalism, having covered politics in Washington and Maryland as well as nearly every form of auto racing, including NASCAR, IndyCar, AMA Motocross and IHRA Drag Racing. Now living near Emerald Isle, North Carolina, Marquis covers Late Model Stock Cars and Super Late Models in the Carolinas and Virginia.
