Derek Kraus remembered when Austin Nason told him last season he was retiring from racing.
The news was bittersweet, to see a relatively young driver step away for family and business reasons.
Kraus was laughing again Sunday about the conversation he and Nason had at Dominion Raceway. Laughing, and wishing the decision had stuck.
Nason got a mild bite from the racing bug again when his car didn’t sell in the offseason, so he and his team reassembled it and figured they’d give it a go at the start of the ASA Midwest Tour season.
There it sat in victory lane at Madison International Speedway, a half-mile south of Wisconsin’s capital city, after Nason picked up the $15,000 top prize in the Joe Shear Classic 200.
“I feel like I’ve had a couple taken away from me and some were mechanical failures and some where just racing deals, I guess you’d call them,” Nason said of near-misses since his 2018 win in the early season special. “So eight years later, we won it again. … This year showed that we had the dominant car and I think the end of the race really showed it.”
Nason, who like the late Shear is from just south of the Wisconsin-Illinois border, finished 1.7 seconds ahead of Kraus with Luke Fenhaus third, Penn Sauter fourth and Andrew Morrissey fifth.
Joking aside, Kraus felt pretty good about his finish, given it was his first race with a two-barrel carburetor since switching to a Van Doorn chassis.
“I just needed quite a bit of turn in the center,” Kraus said. “I felt like I had really good drive and really good entry stability. It was just too tight.”
Similarly, Fenhaus was comfortable with third after struggling a day earlier in practice.
“I thought it was a good ending race, but we just really struggled all day,” Fenhaus said. “We thought we could race a little bit with those guys (late), but the 14 (Nason), I think, had the best car by far.”
At the finish maybe, though not all day.
Gabe Sommers, a two-time series champion, led 154 of the first 156 laps before a failure in the left front suspension left him hobbling to the pits. He lost 19 laps and finished 13th.
Sommers’ agonizing exit opened the door for Sauter, the 16-year-old son of 2016 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Johnny Sauter.
Sauter had a comfortable lead when the final scheduled caution flag flew, but the veteran Nason took advantage of his inside position after their restart and got to the front.
“It just sucks, honestly,” Sauter said. “I feel like all day, all day [in practice] yesterday we had a car that I’ve never felt before, just really, really good on long or short runs, and then we obviously backed it up in qualifying by qualifying second.
“On the restart, [Nason] just kind of drove ’er off in there and used me up a little bit, you could say, and … maybe screwed up the left front tire.”
Sauter got by briefly on a subsequent restart, but with the toe knocked out, he couldn’t hold the spot.
To his credit, Nason got to the finish with his steering wheel out of whack after a failure that occurred while he was racing with Sommers that could have been catastrophic.
“Starting 13th I knew I had my work cut out, but when we got to second by lap 30 or something I just rode around, saved myself,” Nason said.
“It was a pretty good race car to come back through the field. So I’m proud of the guys, proud of the team. This was a bare chassis on Tuesday.”
Taken to victory lane by a driver who was retired as recently as a few months ago.
Results: 2026 Joe Shear Classic:
- Austin Nason
- Derek Kraus
- Luke Fenhaus
- Penn Sauter
- Andrew Morrissey
- John DeAngelis
- Ty Majeski
- Ryan Farrell
- Paul Shafer
- Riley Stenjem
- Nick Panitzke
- Mitch Haver
- Gabe Sommers
- Nick Egan
- Levon Van Der Geest
- Jordan DeVoy
- Joseph Scholze
- Casey Johnson
- Jacob Goede
- Justin Mondeik
- Ty Fredrickson
- Bryce Miller
- Cody Vander Loop
