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Stewart wins the battle but Nelson the Super Stock war as 2026 Northland Series wraps up at Ashland

By Nick Gima

ASHLAND, WI (August 15) - Dylan Nelson did just enough to earn his second FastLane Motorsports Northland Super Stock Series championship on Saturday night at ABC Raceway.

The 2022 series champion came into the WISSOTA Dirt Track Series program with a 21-point advantage ahead of Tim Johnson, on the strength of wins in three of the series’ first four features and runner-up finishes in two others. But while Johnson was racing for the lead throughout much of the 30-lap series finale on Saturday, Nelson was mired mid-pack. He made enough of a late-race charge to finish seventh and secure the title.

The program was delayed for two hours due to a soaking rain which arrived less than a half-hour before the scheduled 6:30 p.m. hot-lap session. Track crews worked diligently to restore the racing surface and, with the cooperation of more than half of the 62 racers registered for the five-division program, the slick red-clay surface became smooth and sticky-fast, and the program was completed by 11 p.m.

While Nelson was working toward winning the series crown, Steve Stuart was dominant on his way to taking the checkers in the WISSOTA Super Stock feature. Stuart, who started fourth, was immediately in the mix with front-row mates Scott Lawrence and Johnson for early pacesetting duties, with the track’s divisional points leader, Matt Deragon, getting by Jason Melton for fourth.

A lap seven spin by Dalton Truchon drew the first of six caution flags scattered throughout the run, and on the restart Stuart worked his favored high line around Lawrence and Johnson for the lead. Trevor Koslowski’s spin after contact with Allan Cleveland deep in the field slowed the proceedings again on lap nine, and on the ensuing restart a multi-car melee damaged several of the race’s 26 starters on the frontstretch.

With the next six laps running uninterrupted, Stuart showed why he was so dominant earlier in the season, running the high line to move out to a nearly 2-second lead ahead of Johnson, while Lawrence contended with Deragon and a hard-charging Tristan LaBarge. Melton’s stalled ride on lap 15 brought the field back to Stuart, and a mess one lap after the restart brought about another yellow flag. On each restart Stuart answered the bell with consistently strong laps.

On the lap 16 redo Deragon drove by both Lawrence and Johnson to take second, but despite his determined effort - and one more stoppage on lap 21 for Koslowski’s second spin right in front of Stuart - there was no catching the 10-time track champ on this night.

Stuart eventually finished a full 3 seconds ahead of Deragon for his second win of the season here and 54th of his career, good for sixth all-time at the historic northern Wisconsin speedplant. Johnson came home third, with LaBarge getting by Lawrence in the closing laps to take fourth.

Nelson’s run, from his 12th starting position to seventh at the final stripe, was enough for a 16-point advantage ahead of Johnson in the series’ final standings. Deragon takes a nine-point advantage ahead of Shawn McFadden in the track’s points chase into next Saturday’s season finale.

One driver who may have found himself a new full-time Saturday night home is David Baxter, who scored his third straight WISSOTA Midwest Modified A-main win. Baxter, who had never won at Ashland before his August 1 win here, started outside on the front row. He beat Jacob Anderson out of the first turns and sped away to an impressive win.

Baxter was already nearly a 1.5 seconds ahead of the pack by lap four of the 20 scheduled, while Anderson was in a race-long battle with four-time track champ Paul Suzik for second. Farther back Jaxon Helland had all he could do to stay ahead of another former track champion, Jimmy Latvala.

Baxter continued to build on his considerable lead while working his way through slower traffic on lap nine, and with the race quickly running to its conclusion without a caution, he eventually finished with a huge 5.1-second cushion while running the only sub-17-second laps posted in the race. Anderson barely held off Suzik for second, and Helland completed his best race night of his career here - he won his first-ever heat race earlier in the program - with a fourth-place finish ahead of Latvala.

Marcus Dunbar wisely put together a relatively conservative run to finish ninth, giving him a 52-point advantage over Latvala in the Midwest Mod standings. Dunbar needs to only unload his racer and run a green-flag lap next Saturday to claim his third straight points title and the fifth such trophy of his career at ABC.

Another driver who turned in a strong performance was Nick Oreskovich, who survived stiff challenges from Brady Uotinen and outran Brandon Copp to win his third WISSOTA Modified feature of the season.

Oreskovich started the 20-lapper on the pole and was just ahead of Jake Hiatt, with Uotinen dueling with Cole Spacek for third, when Hiatt spun with a lap in the books to bring about the race’s only yellow flag. Once back under green, Oreskovich immediately went to the outermost groove of the smooth, wide red-clay surface and began to click off some lightning-fast laps - which he needed, because Uotinen was doing the same around the inside line of the track and staying in lock-step with the leader.

Copp, the division’s points leader, moved by Spacek into third shortly after the restart and began a determined effort to catch the lead pair, and by mid-race he was within a half-second of Uotinen, who had fallen to a half-second back of Oreskovich. During lap 13 Copp moved into second after a brief battle with Uotinen, but that allowed Oreskovich to extend his lead.

Oreskovich was nearly two full seconds ahead of Copp when he began working through backmarkers with three laps remaining, and his final winning margin was a more-than-sufficient 1.74 seconds for the 31st win of his career at Ashland. Uotinen held on for a solid third-place finish ahead of Andrew Mackey, and a recovered Hiatt passed Spacek’s ailing machine coming off the final turn for fifth.

Copp’s points lead ahead of Oreskovich sits at 22 with one race night remaining.

The WISSOTA Pure Stocks feature ran nonstop for the second week in a row, and Jake Smith took his fourth win of the season here to help his efforts toward a possible national championship.

Smith started on the pole and led every one of the 12 laps, staying safely but not quite comfortably ahead of Dylan Helget, who was piloting a car borrowed from former WISSOTA national champion Brent Mindock Saturday. Helget, in turn, maintained a similarly sized cushion ahead of divisional points leader Shane Basina through the early laps. Farther back, Jason Simonson and Alex Larson waged an entertaining battle for fourth.

Helget got a run on Smith as the race neared its mid-point, but Smith adjusted and pulled away during the second half of the event, leading by nearly a second with three laps remaining. Helget closed the gap again on the white-flag lap and got to within a half-second of the leader, but Smith closed the deal for his fifth ABC feature win overall. Basina came home third and holds a five-point lead over Helget with one night left, while Larson eventually won the duel with Simonson for fourth.

The program’s final feature, in the ABC Six-Cylinders, went to the division’s points leader, Roger Walker, for a track-leading sixth time.

Walker will carry a 17-point advantage into the final night of regular-season racing as he tries for his second track title.

SUMMARY

WISSOTA Modifieds:

A Feature 1 (20 Laps): 1. 21F-Nick Oreskovich[1]; 2. 22-Brandon Copp[6]; 3. 9-Brady Uotinen[3]; 4. 7-Andrew Mackey[7]; 5. 3H-Jake Hiatt[2]; 6. 22S-Cole Spacek[4]; 7. 22J-Jeff Spacek[5]; 8. 00-Ross Fuhrman[8]; 9. (DNS) 224-Cody Wolkowski

Heat 1 (10 Laps): 1. 21F-Nick Oreskovich[2]; 2. 3H-Jake Hiatt[1]; 3. 9-Brady Uotinen[3]; 4. 22S-Cole Spacek[4]; 5. 22J-Jeff Spacek[6]; 6. (DNF) 22-Brandon Copp[8]; 7. (DNF) 7-Andrew Mackey[7]; 8. (DNF) 00-Ross Fuhrman[9]; 9. (DNS) 224-Cody Wolkowski

WISSOTA Super Stocks:

A Feature 1 (20 Laps): 1. 80-Steve Stuart[4]; 2. 27-Matt Deragon[6]; 3. 1JR-Tim Johnson[2]; 4. 19L-Tristan LaBarge[8]; 5. 77-Scott Lawrence[1]; 6. 6-Shane Kisling[7]; 7. 25N-Dylan Nelson[12]; 8. 51JR-Shawn McFadden[14]; 9. 7R-Tommy Richards[5]; 10. 62-Dalton Truchon[15]; 11. 2-Don Livingston[20]; 12. 3B-Austin Blom[13]; 13. 77K-Rick Simpson[10]; 14. 44-Trenton Bond[19]; 15. L1-Andrew Johnson[22]; 16. 7B-Jason Melton[3]; 17. 12K-DJ Keeler[18]; 18. 19-Larry Both[16]; 19. 25-Chad Johnson[24]; 20. 6P-Dan Peterson[25]; 21. 9-Jakob Bond[21]; 22. 11R-Rita Anderson[23]; 23. 4A-Allan Cleveland[17]; 24. 38-Trevor Koslowski[26]; 25. (DNF) 22T-Terran Spacek[9]; 26. (DNF) 26-Kyle Copp[11]; 27. (DNS) 21C-Patrick Beeksma

Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 7R-Tommy Richards[2]; 2. 27-Matt Deragon[4]; 3. 22T-Terran Spacek[3]; 4. 3B-Austin Blom[7]; 5. 4A-Allan Cleveland[1]; 6. 9-Jakob Bond[6]; 7. 6P-Dan Peterson[5]

Heat 2 (8 Laps): 1. 19L-Tristan LaBarge[1]; 2. 77-Scott Lawrence[2]; 3. 77K-Rick Simpson[4]; 4. 51JR-Shawn McFadden[6]; 5. 12K-DJ Keeler[7]; 6. L1-Andrew Johnson[5]; 7. 38-Trevor Koslowski[3]

Heat 3 (8 Laps): 1. 7B-Jason Melton[1]; 2. 1JR-Tim Johnson[3]; 3. 26-Kyle Copp[4]; 4. 62-Dalton Truchon[5]; 5. 44-Trenton Bond[6]; 6. 11R-Rita Anderson[2]; 7. (DNS) 21C-Patrick Beeksma

Heat 4 (8 Laps): 1. 80-Steve Stuart[1]; 2. 6-Shane Kisling[4]; 3. 25N-Dylan Nelson[6]; 4. 19-Larry Both[2]; 5. 2-Don Livingston[5]; 6. 25-Chad Johnson[3]

WISSOTA Midwest Mods:

A Feature 1 (20 Laps): 1. 35B-David Baxter[2]; 2. 71-Jacob Anderson[1]; 3. 91-Paul Suzik[4]; 4. 20-Jaxon Helland[3]; 5. 21-Jimmy Latvala[6]; 6. 15-James Vendela[8]; 7. 28-Paul Ripley[9]; 8. 20-Judd Skubal[5]; 9. 7XJR-Marcus Dunbar[7]; 10. 21+7-Ryan Barningham[11]; 11. 79-Bryan Lund[10]; 12. 15K-Connor Kaseno[12]

Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 20-Jaxon Helland[2]; 2. 21-Jimmy Latvala[4]; 3. 91-Paul Suzik[6]; 4. 20-Judd Skubal[5]; 5. 28-Paul Ripley[1]; 6. 21+7-Ryan Barningham[3]

Heat 2 (8 Laps): 1. 7XJR-Marcus Dunbar[2]; 2. 71-Jacob Anderson[3]; 3. 35B-David Baxter[1]; 4. 15-James Vendela[4]; 5. 79-Bryan Lund[6]; 6. 15K-Connor Kaseno[5]

WISSOTA Pure Stocks:

A Feature 1 (12 Laps): 1. 86J-Jake Smith[1]; 2. 57-Dylan Helget[4]; 3. 69ER-Shane Basina[5]; 4. 67-Alex Larson[2]; 5. 33S-Jason Simonson[6]; 6. 5Z-Zene Anderson[7]; 7. (DNS) 37-Katlin Pritzl

Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 86J-Jake Smith[2]; 2. 69ER-Shane Basina[4]; 3. 57-Dylan Helget[3]; 4. 67-Alex Larson[6]; 5. 37-Katlin Pritzl[1]; 6. 33S-Jason Simonson[7]; 7. (DNF) 5Z-Zene Anderson[5]

Six Cylinders:

A Feature 1 (15 Laps): 1. 5-Roger Walker[4]; 2. 28-Travis Swanson[3]; 3. 97-Alex Bond[5]; 4. 69ER-Shane Basina[1]; 5. 92-Cody Eichmann[6]; 6. 42-Cameron Bond[7]; 7. (DNF) 05-Kyle Weber[2]

Heat 1 (8 Laps): 1. 5-Roger Walker[2]; 2. 28-Travis Swanson[4]; 3. 97-Alex Bond[3]; 4. 69ER-Shane Basina[5]; 5. 05-Kyle Weber[7]; 6. 92-Cody Eichmann[6]; 7. 42-Cameron Bond[1]