MOLES GETS FIRST USAC EASTERN STORM WIN AT BIG DIAMOND
Photo by Rich Forman
POTTSVILLE, Pa.—For the past two years, Mitchel Moles had the rare distinction of having an Eastern Storm championship on his resume, but not a single Eastern Storm feature victory.
The Raisin City, California native dusted his hands of that particular circumstance with a wire-to-wire performance on Thursday night, leading all 30 laps from green to checkered to earn his first career USAC Yokohama Tire Eastern Storm Presented by Levan Machine feature win at Pottsville, Pennsylvania’s Big Diamond Speedway.
Furthermore, Moles finally got off the schneid at Big Diamond after finishing as the runner-up in each of his past two appearances at the 3/8-mile dirt oval. He led 15 laps and finished second in 2024, then followed it up with another second place run in 2025.
Moles was determined not to let one slip away from him this time around. Despite a feisty challenge from Briggs Danner down the stretch, Moles didn’t slip up on his way to his fifth USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship triumph of the season aboard his Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports/AME – Mesilla Valley Transportation/Spike/Stanton Chevy.
In his first four seasons of USAC National Sprint Car competition, Moles had tallied a total of five victories. Through the first 22 events of the 2026 campaign, he has added five more. His total of 10 series wins has elevated him to 54th place on the all-time list alongside Briggs Danner, Thomas Meseraull, Eddie Sachs, Tony Stewart, and Johnny Thomson.
But turning silver into something even shinier at Big Diamond proved to be among the sweetest of those victories.
“Oh, man! It feels good to finally get one of these at Eastern Storm,” Moles exhaled. “I told Logan (Seavey), I think it was two years ago, ‘man, I really want to win here.’ It's got a hell of a crowd and it's in the middle of nowhere. It’s kind of the stuff I like.”
Moles solidified a front row spot with his qualifying run despite a near misstep that could’ve turned his night on its head, so to speak.
“We battled a little adversity there in qualifying and biked up, then we were able to stay in the top five,” Moles recalled.
To the naked eye, there seemed to be slim to nil adversity for Moles throughout the first two-thirds of the race, while he built up a four second lead on the field. But to Moles, everything wasn’t quite right until a timely yellow for 18th running Olivia Thayer’s spin and stop in turns one and two on the 19th lap.
On most occasions, a yellow flag erasing a significant lead is a steering wheel puncher, but for Moles, it was certainly not an unwelcome sight this time.
“My mind was racing so fast; I was just turning every knob,” Moles admitted. “I fired off and I really wasn't that good, and I just kept working on it and kept working on it. I needed to get my ladder down, and once that yellow came out, I was able to get my bird cage down and I got a lot better. We just missed it a little bit and that's when I said I need to just really get the car back underneath me and I was able to do that under that yellow and put myself in a lot more comfortable spot.”
The term “timely yellow” belies the fact that, despite the deficit at the time of the caution, Danner was definitely on the move. Starting sixth, Danner charged around Brady Bacon in turn one for the fourth position on lap nine, then grabbed third from Chase Stockon amid lapped traffic on the back straightaway on lap 16. On the lap 20 restart, Danner took second from Justin Grant on the back straightaway to move into second, leaving nobody else between himself and Danner for the lead.
With five laps to go, Danner was right on Moles’ tail tank, showing him a nose as he inched closer and closer. But at that moment, Danner got four wheels on the turn two cushion and lost a ton of ground to Moles, who sprinted away to roughly a 12 car length lead in the matter of a blink of an eye.
Moles recalled the previous night’s race at Bridgeport where the roles were reversed. There, Moles showed his nose, and Danner shot away to victory while Moles had to settle for second.
“I did that to Briggs last night and he just took off and went, so I just followed his path there,” Moles explained. “They're on a roll right now and he’s really clicking. I was just happy to get my ladder down because I felt really bad there. I guess I had a three second lead, but it didn't feel that way.”
Moles had nearly run into a similar situation earlier in the feature but had such a lead that it didn’t leave much of a dent in his margin at the time.
“You do that once and it'll teach you a lesson,” Moles stated. “Luckily, I was able to recover. I was pretty far on the banking on the backside there. I took that out of Jac Haudenschild’s playbook there. He did that at racetracks all the time.”
Moles finished the task down the stretch, crossing underneath the checkered by 1.498 seconds with Danner second, while Bacon got third from Grant via a turn three slider with five laps remaining. Grant slotted fourth while Chase Stockon rounded out the top five.
By leading each and every one of the 30 feature laps, Moles’ wire-to-wire performance earned him the K & N Filters Clean Air Award.
Danner once again continued his qualifying prowess by recording his third consecutive LearnLab Fast Qualifying effort of the week. He now has one-third of his career USAC National Sprint Car quick times in the past three nights. His ninth career fast time award placed him 57th on the all-time list alongside Eddie Leavitt, Johnny Rutherford and Josh Wise. Furthermore, Danner is now just the third driver to earn three-straight fast qualifying times during Eastern Storm, following Levi Jones (2010) and Kevin Thomas Jr. (2018).
Bacon’s third-straight third-place finish of the week moved him to the top of the Eastern Storm points by one single marker over Moles with three more rounds remaining in Pennsylvania.
Robert Ballou persevered despite an engine that wasn't quite running at full song for the last two-thirds of the feature. He advanced nine positions in the feature, starting 15th and finishing sixth to earn Rod End Supply Hard Charger honors.
USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: June 18, 2026 – Big Diamond Speedway – Pottsville, Pennsylvania – Yokohama Tire Eastern Storm Presented by Levan Machine – 3/8-Mile Dirt Track
LEARNLAB QUALIFYING: 1. Briggs Danner, 39, Hogue-14.871; 2. Kyle Cummins, 3p, Petty-14.927; 3. Justin Grant, 4, TOPP-14.972; 4. Brady Bacon, 20, Dyson-15.201; 5. Mitchel Moles, 19AZ, Reinbold/Underwood-15.255; 6. Chase Stockon, 92, Sertich-15.277; 7. Jake Swanson, 5T, Daming Swanson-15.284; 8. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-15.292; 9. Hayden Reinbold, 19, Reinbold/Underwood-15.301; 10. Cale Coons, 63, Dooling/Curb-Agajanian-15.319; 11. Logan Seavey, 57, Abacus-15.324; 12. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-15.331; 13. Christian Bruno, 3BC, JMO-15.373; 14. Kevin Thomas Jr., 3R, Rock Steady-15.404; 15. Ricky Lewis, 41, Lewis-15.521; 16. Charles Davis Jr., 47, Davis-15.543; 17. Ronald Helmick, 22R, Helmick-15.698; 18. Steven Drevicki, 19s, Drevicki-15.737; 19. Olivia Thayer, 39T, Thayer-16.536; 20. Dirk Rimrott, 1x, Rimrott-17.062; 21. James Turnbull II, 5, Baldwin/Fox-NT.
K1 RACEGEAR FIRST HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Charles Davis Jr. (1), 2. Brady Bacon (5), 3. Cale Coons (3), 4. Briggs Danner (6), 5. Jake Swanson (4), 6. Christian Bruno (2), 7. Olivia Thayer (7). 2:05.481
TJ FORGED SECOND HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Kevin Thomas Jr. (2), 2. Mitchel Moles (5), 3. Ronald Helmick (1), 4. C.J. Leary (4), 5. Kyle Cummins (6), 6. Logan Seavey (3). 2:04.080
K & N FILTERS THIRD HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Ricky Lewis (2), 2. Steven Drevicki (1), 3. Robert Ballou (3), 4. Chase Stockon (5), 5. Hayden Reinbold (4), 6. Justin Grant (6), 7. James Turnbull II (7). 2:07.317
FEATURE: (30 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Mitchel Moles (2), 2. Briggs Danner (6), 3. Brady Bacon (3), 4. Justin Grant (4), 5. Chase Stockon (1), 6. Robert Ballou (15), 7. Kyle Cummins (5), 8. Jake Swanson (10), 9. Hayden Reinbold (12), 10. Ricky Lewis (8), 11. Cale Coons (13), 12. Christian Bruno (16), 13. Steven Drevicki (18), 14. C.J. Leary (11), 15. Kevin Thomas Jr. (7), 16. Charles Davis Jr. (9), 17. Ronald Helmick (17), 18. James Turnbull II (20), 19. Olivia Thayer (19), 20. Logan Seavey (14), 21. Dirk Rimrott (21). NT
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-30 Mitchel Moles.
USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Kyle Cummins-1508, 2-Justin Grant-1414, 3-Mitchel Moles-1413, 4-Briggs Danner-1343, 5-Jake Swanson-1253, 6-Chase Stockon-1220, 7-Logan Seavey-1213, 8-Kevin Thomas Jr.-1210, 9-C.J. Leary-1149, 10-Robert Ballou-1105.
USAC YOKOHAMA TIRE EASTERN STORM PRESENTED BY LEVAN MACHINE POINTS: 1-Brady Bacon-215, 2-Mitchel Moles-214, 3-Kyle Cummins-202, 4-Briggs Danner-201, 5-Justin Grant-196, 6-Chase Stockon-182, 7-Jake Swanson-181, 8-Robert Ballou-166, 9-Cale Coons-150, 10-C.J. Leary-149.
USAC PARALLAX GROUP NATIONAL PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Kevin Thomas Jr.-68, 2-Hayden Reinbold-64, 3-Cale Coons-61, 4-Briggs Danner-56, 5-Robert Ballou-56, 6-Justin Grant-54, 7-Jacob Denney-52, 8-Chase Stockon-46, 9-Brady Bacon-44, 10-Logan Calderwood-39.
USAC EASTERN STORM PARALLAX GROUP PASSING MASTER POINTS: 1-Christian Bruno-18, 2-Mitchel Moles-16, 3-Briggs Danner-15, 4-Robert Ballou-15, 5-Brady Bacon-13, 6-Chase Stockon-12, 7-Jake Swanson-7, 8-Hayden Reinbold-7, 9-Steven Drevicki-7, 10-Jason Cherry-5.
NEXT USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: June 19, 2026 – Williams Grove Speedway – Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania – Yokohama Tire Eastern Storm Presented by Levan Machine – 1/2-Mile Dirt Track
CONTINGENCY AWARD WINNERS:
Dirt Draft Hot Laps Fastest Driver: Jake Swanson (15.166)
LearnLab Fast Qualifier: Briggs Danner (14.871)
K1 RaceGear First Heat Winner: Charles Davis Jr.
TJ Forged Second Heat Winner: Kevin Thomas Jr.
K & N Filters Third Heat Winner: Ricky Lewis
Rod End Supply Hard Charger: Robert Ballou (15th to 6th)
K & N Filters Clean Air Award: Mitchel Moles (30 laps led)
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