Tristan McKee started from the pole position and led every lap in the back half of the race en route to a dominant ARCA Menards Series victory at Iowa Speedway on Friday night. McKee has won two of the six races he has competed in this season.
McKee turned 16 years old on Aug. 3. The teenager, who became the second-youngest winner in ARCA Menards Series history last year at Watkins Glen, is not yet allowed to race at the longer tracks on the schedule.
Despite his youth, McKee finds himself as the championship leader as the ARCA Menards East Series heads to its 2026 finale. He will hold a two-point margin over Max Reaves when they enter the championship race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
McKee regained the lead over Reaves after he secured the maximum points available on Friday. He earned the pole position, ran the fastest lap, and ultimately won the race.
“It’s big, coming back from seven or eight, however many we were down,” McKee said. “Feels good to get that back. Definitely capitalized on our day, and got the pole, got some points, led laps, all that. So it definitely feels really good.”
Carson Brown placed second as the pair paced the field for most of the race. A late caution led to a restart with under 10 laps to go and gave Brown a chance to overtake McKee, but he was unable to as McKee pulled ahead in the No. 77 Chili’s Chevrolet and never looked back.
Lapped traffic became a factor at the 0.875-mile short track in Newton, Iowa as the field spread out. The only real scare for McKee came when a pack of lapped cars held him up in the first stage of the race and allowed Brown to lead until the first scheduled break for pit stops on lap 50.
Blue flag rules in motorsports dictate that slower cars that are about to be lapped must allow faster cars access to the preferred line of the track as they go past, but are not always strictly enforced. Both drivers battled through lapped cars throughout the race.
“They are definitely kind of in the way out there and unpredictable at times, so it just kind of depends who you catch and what they’re feeling in that moment, I guess,” McKee said. “There’s just a couple out there that do the same thing just about every time you get to them, you know, pretty good about it and stick to the bottom.”
“But most of them are just kind of in the middle of the track, and then they start going down, and you know, you’re just trying to get inside of them, because they’re floating in the middle of the track,” McKee said. “And then they just start cutting down in the middle of the corner, so it’s kind of a mess.”
While Brown benefited from the traffic early on, he was held up at points and ultimately was unable to catch McKee late in the race.
“It was definitely chaos from the driver’s seat, and probably a little more chaos than what we needed,” Brown said. “It gave me the lead at one point and then just ended up losing it there towards the end and just couldn’t fire off very well.”
Both drivers will make starts in higher series in the coming weeks. Brown’s next race is the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series at Iowa Speedway, while McKee will man a truck in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series on Aug. 14 at Richmond Raceway.
Bristol Motor Speedway will host the East Series finale and the battle for the title between McKee and Reaves on Sept. 17.
