BIG TIME! LEARY WINS IOWA 100, EXTENDS USAC SILVER CROWN POINT LEAD

C.J. Leary led the final 54 laps to capture a USAC Silver Crown victory in Saturday night’s Iowa 100 at Iowa Speedway.
(Rich Forman Photo)

By: Richie Murray – USAC Media

Newton, Iowa (August 8, 2026)………When it comes to the two biggest and fastest pavement tracks on the USAC Silver Crown trail, C.J. Leary has had the upper hand in 2026.

After winning at the 1.25-mile WWT Raceway in June, Leary added the 7/8-mile Iowa Speedway to his win list in what was his first visit to the track during Saturday night’s Iowa 100.

Leary (Greenfield, Indiana) started fifth but found his way to fourth on the opening lap, then to third on the second circuit before taking over second on the 24th trip. On lap 47, he pounced when racelong leader Chase Cabre’s engine shut off with an apparent ignition issue.

From there, Leary controlled the pace the rest of the way, leading the final 54 laps while also withstanding a late-race challenge from Mario Clouser to front a one-two Team AZ Racing/Petty-Rossi/Curb-Agajanian result.

Oddly enough, entering the 2026 season, it had been 16 years since teammates occupied the top two spots of the finishing order in a USAC Silver Crown race. It’s already occurred twice this season, including in two of the past three events. Mitchel Moles and Hayden Reinbold led a one-two Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports finish in July at the Terre Haute Action Track.

In the process, Leary bumped his USAC Silver Crown Championship point lead from 36 to 45 as he seeks his first career series title. Furthermore, he’s now run his streak to six podium finishes in six starts this season, plus 12 consecutive top five finishes with the series dating back to 2025. He’s been exceptionally strong on the pavement, which has netted him finishes of 4th, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 1st in his past six asphalt appearances, with the latest victories coming at the two biggest pavement circuits on the slate.

“I think these two big fast race tracks play a little bit into my hands,” Leary said. “I don’t know if it’s from my dad (Chuck Leary) or what, but I know he was riding along with me there because he was always good on these big fast race tracks where you just kind of let it all hang out.”

Quite impressively, Leary’s Iowa victory came in his very first visit to the track, which also just happened to be the first USAC Silver Crown event at the track since 2015, more than 11 years ago. Just five of the 18 drivers in Saturday’s lineup possessed previous Iowa Speedway experience of some sort, and through it all, Leary passed three of them on the path to victory aboard his Avanti Windows & Doors – Curb Records/DRC/Stanton Chevy.

“It’s my first time here,” Leary revealed. “This place is really, really cool. It’s on a really good stage. Hats off to USAC and (series director) Kody Swanson, and everybody who got the Silver Crown series back to Iowa. This was one that was on the bucket list to win this year and we did it.”

Early morning qualifying presented a different format than usual, with drivers and cars being permitted to come and go on track as they pleased throughout the 35-minute session, taking as many laps as they wanted, rather than just two laps on the clock. Leary played the long game, eschewing a run for the pole in favor of saving some rubber for the 100-lap main event.

“We played qualifying quite right with our tires and the way we ran them throughout practice,” Leary explained. “Normally, we get just two laps of qualifying, but today, guys were able to bolt tires on keep trying to improve their time. I kept telling these guys, ‘let’s not burn up our only good set of tires just in qualifying.’ One hundred laps is a long time around here.”

To start off the day, Cabre made history in what was his first ever USAC Silver Crown appearance. In LearnLab Qualifying, he captured the pole position with a lap of 21.963 seconds, which translates to an average speed of 143.423 miles per hour. With that, he became just the sixth driver to win the pole in his USAC Silver Crown debut, joining Larry Dickson (1971 Nazareth), Ken Schrader (1980 Terre Haute), Brad Noffsinger (1991 Indiana State Fairgrounds), P.J. Jones (1994 IRP), and Shane Hmiel (2008 IRP).

Cabre promptly became the dominant figure of the race as well, pulling out to a whopping 10 second lead by the 47th lap when, all of a sudden, he dropped off the pace, handing the lead over to Leary who now commandeered control just four laps shy of the halfway point. In a cruel twist, after Cabre coasted into the pits without power to his car, the team fired up the engine and it started fine, with the team suspecting an ignition issue as the culprit.

While Leary maintained an advantage of one second or so throughout the balance of the race, several other challengers emerged to dethrone him. Briggs Danner ran in the “place” position until Jackson Macenko shot up to second under Danner in turn one on the 59th lap. Clouser then ripped around the outside of Danner for third a half lap later, while Justin Grant followed suit past Danner into fourth. Ultimately, Danner dropped out with a driveline issue.

Clouser worked his way past Macenko with a low side maneuver in turns three and four on lap 66 to slot into second behind his teammate, Leary, with 34 laps to go and just seven tenths of a second separating the two. Grant charged inside of Macenko on the front stretch to get the third spot on lap 76.

In a race chockfull of heavy attrition, just five cars were left running at the checkered. Thirteen drivers exited the stage, ending solid performances, including fourth running Macenko on lap 82, fifth running Kyle Hamilton on lap 86, and the aforementioned Danner on lap 89 while he was running fourth.

The last 19 laps ran under green as Leary kept Clouser at bay throughout to earn his seventh career USAC Silver Crown victory, tying Jerry Coons Jr., Rick Hood, and George Snider for 18th place on the all-time list. Leary also led the final 54 laps en route to victory, and as the leader of the most laps, he earned the K & N Filters Clean Air Award.

“Tyler Kramer called a hell of a race up there on the spotter stand,” Leary praised. “He kept me just where I needed to be and talked me through the whole race. It definitely pays dividends to have a good guy up there on the spotter box. And I can’t say enough about Joe Devin. To go one-two here is really special. Joe just puts his heart and soul into this thing. He’s tinkering on it and laying on the ground and he’s doing all the stuff that a good crew chief should do, which makes my job easy.”

Mario Clouser crossed the stripe 0.895 seconds behind Leary in the second position, while Justin Grant took third. For Clouser, it was the third time he’s finished as the runner-up at Iowa Speedway. He was also second with the USAC National Midgets at Iowa in both 2011 and 2012. On Saturday, he was just one spot shy again of earning his first career USAC national victory.

Nathan Byrd became the first driver since J.J. Yeley 19 years ago in 2007 at Kansas Speedway to compete in both a USAC Silver Crown and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts race on the same day at the same track. Byrd finished fourth in the USAC race and 25th in the NASCAR event.

Meanwhile, Gregg Cory advanced 10 positions to earn his best career USAC Silver Crown finish of fifth. His 15th to 5th run earned him the Rod End Supply Hard Charger award.

USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: August 8, 2026 – Iowa Speedway – Newton, Iowa – 7/8-Mile Paved Oval – Iowa 100

LEARNLAB QUALIFYING: 1. Chase Cabre, 26, Pierce-21.963; 2. Mario Clouser, 20, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi/Curb-Agajanian-22.112; 3. Bobby Santos, 98, DJ-22.139; 4. Davey Hamilton Jr., 14, Hamilton/DB-22.140; 5. C.J. Leary, 21, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi/Curb-Agajanian-22.157; 6. Dakoda Armstrong, 5, C & A-22.382; 7. Briggs Danner, 77, Doran/Swanson-22.389; 8. Kyle Hamilton, 6, Klatt-22.389; 9. Kyle Steffens, 8, Steffens-22.399; 10. Jackson Macenko, 124, Hayes-22.528; 11. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn-22.594; 12. Chelby Hinton, 80, Breidinger-22.720; 13. Kaylee Bryson, 11, Abacus/Droplight-22.761; 14. Nathan Byrd, 40, Meyer/Byrd/Tosti-22.902; 15. Robert Tyler, 75, Tyler-23.543; 16. Gregg Cory, 32, Williams/Cory-24.428; 17. Dave Berkheimer, 31, Berkheimer-26.241; 18. Scott Hampton, 211, Team AZ/Petty/Rossi/Curb-Agajanian-NT.

FEATURE: (100 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. C.J. Leary (5), 2. Mario Clouser (2), 3. Justin Grant (10), 4. Nathan Byrd (13), 5. Gregg Cory (15), 6. Briggs Danner (7), 7. Kyle Hamilton (8), 8. Jackson Macenko (9), 9. Chelby Hinton (11), 10. Bobby Santos (3), 11. Dave Berkheimer (16), 12. Kaylee Bryson (12), 13. Chase Cabre (1), 14. Davey Hamilton Jr. (4), 15. Robert Tyler (14), 16. Dakoda Armstrong (6), 17. Scott Hampton (17). 44:18.389

FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-46 Chase Cabre, Laps 47-100 C.J. Leary.

USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-C.J. Leary-421, 2-Justin Grant-376, 3-Mario Clouser-352, 4-Briggs Danner-298, 5-Gregg Cory-266, 6-Kyle Steffens-239, 7-Dave Berkheimer-220, 8-Dakoda Armstrong-217, 9-Kaylee Bryson-176, 10-Bobby Santos-165.

USAC PARALLAX GROUP NATIONAL PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Kevin Thomas Jr.-123, 2-Hayden Reinbold-110, 3-Justin Grant-102, 4-Robert Ballou-93, 5-Cale Coons-93, 6-Jacob Denney-84, 7-Jake Swanson-84, 8-Briggs Danner-82, 9-Chase Stockon-81, 10-Gavin Miller-71.

NEXT USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: August 22, 2026 – Illinois State Fairgrounds – Springfield, Illinois – 1-Mile Dirt Oval – 63rd Bettenhausen 100 Presented by Hunt Brothers Pizza

CONTINGENCY AWARD WINNERS:

Dirt Draft Practice Fastest Driver: C.J. Leary (22.217)

LearnLab Fast Qualifier: Chase Cabre (21.963)

K & N Filters Clean Air Award: C.J. Leary (54 laps led)

Rod End Supply Hard Charger: Gregg Cory (15th to 5th)