18-Year-Old Aims for Another ARCA Win in Preparation for 2027
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 16, 2026) – Lazy days of summer? Not for Carson Brown. The 18-year-old racer from New London, North Carolina, has been racing – and winning – across a variety of tracks and series.
Signed by Richard Childress Racing (RCR) to a driver development contract earlier this year, Brown has burnished the team’s belief in him by dominating the ASA STARS National Tour, scoring his first CARS Tour West win and being consistently fast in the ARCA Menards Series, as evidenced by his second career win Sept. 6 at the DuQuoin (Ill.) State Fairgrounds and five poles in the last three months.
Thursday night at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, Brown will make his 17th career ARCA start, but his first of any kind on the .533-mile, high-banked oval.
“Physically and mentally, Bristol is very challenging. I expect it to be hard,” said Brown, who will drive the No. 28 Distributor Wire & Cable Chevrolet for Pinnacle Racing Group.
“All I have to go off is what I’ve experienced in the sim. I learned that it’s difficult to get into a rhythm at Bristol. Between the high banking and the bumps, you’re always up on the wheel, changing your line, changing your throttle placement. It’s a challenge I want to face.”
RCR put its stamp on Brown’s upward trajectory on Aug. 26 when the team promoted him to its championship-winning NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series program, where he will drive the No. 2 Whelen Chevrolet in 2027.
“It’s honestly a dream come true,” Brown said. “The year’s gone very well, but there’s still a good amount of racing ahead of us. I want to keep up the consistency, keep up the speed.
“Just about everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve been in contention for a win and finished in the top-three. Pretty proud to be in that kind of position when we show up at a racetrack. Just need to keep it going and keep preparing myself for 2027.”
Brown is leveraging the present to prepare for the future.
“I’ve always put a lot of time into my preparation, from sim to training to studying past races and trends, but now it’s also about learning the process,” Brown said. “I’m getting into a rhythm of how RCR and Chevrolet train and prepare their drivers week after week. It’s more off-track, behind-the-scenes stuff that I want to learn and understand now to make that learning curve next year a little less steep.”
Brown has reached new heights in 2026. It began before spring even started when Brown announced his arrival on the ASA STARS National Tour, winning the season opener Feb. 10 at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway and then following with a second straight victory March 14 at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida. In between those two races, Brown won his first career ARCA race, starting from the pole and leading every lap March 5 at Phoenix Raceway.
Two more ASA STARS National Tour wins were earned June 21 at Slinger (Wis.) Speedway and July 25 at Newport (Tenn.) Speedway. And when his night didn’t end in victory lane, Brown wasn’t far away. He has finished second three times, including in his most recent outing Sept. 9 at Tri-County Speedway in Granite Falls, North Carolina, where Brown traded the lead with NASCAR Cup Series driver Christopher Bell. Those results have given Brown a commanding 176-point lead in the championship standings.
To put an exclamation point on his Late Model prowess, Brown earned his maiden CARS Tour West win Aug. 15 at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington, by leading every lap from the pole.
“It’s all good seat time, good experience,” said Brown of the success he has earned. “The more experience I can get on any racetrack, the more it helps me across the board.”
Those collective experiences will be needed in Thursday night’s Bush’s Best 200. With no firsthand experience at Bristol, Brown used the simulator to build upon what he has learned at two other high-banked racetracks – Winchester Speedway and Salem Speedway. These two Indiana tracks provide Brown with a hint of what throttling around Bristol’s 28 degrees of banking will be like. Salem is a .555-mile oval with 33 degrees of banking and Winchester is a half-mile oval with 37 degrees of banking.
“I just ran Salem last Saturday in the ARCA car, but I think the level of grip between there and Bristol will be pretty different,” Brown said. “I ran the Winchester 400 last year and had a mechanical failure, so I need to get my revenge on that style of racetrack.”
Brown’s Bristol attack begins at 1 p.m. EDT on Thursday with a 45-minute practice before a 20-minute timed qualifying session at 2 p.m. The 200-lap race goes green at 5:30 p.m. and will be broadcast live on FS1 and streamed on the FOX One app, with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio providing live audio coverage.
