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Strategy; Perseverance the Name of
the Game for Damian Payton; 
Chrissy
Wallace in Super Cup Stock Car Series 2026 Opener at Shenandoah
Speedway
Shenandoah,
Virginia (April 20, 2026) –
The 2026 Super Cup Stock Car Series season kicked off at Shenandoah
Speedway with close competition, an assortment of approaches, and
multiple drivers setting the early bar toward the upcoming string of
spring events and ultimate championship goal.
After Damian Payton
and Chrissy Wallace topped each practice session, respectively,
Petersburg, West Virginia’s Brent Nelson set the fast time of
16.983 
seconds
around the 3/8-mile progressively banked oval in the No. 80
Precision Auto Collision / JEBCO / RAM Trucking / QH Design / Nelson
Motorsports Chevrolet. The
top three, which included the aforementioned practice pacesetters,
were separated by only 0.043 seconds.
To make matters
better for Nelson, when the top four qualifiers redrew for their
starting positions, he picked the number one pill. Leading
the initial few laps of the first 50-lap main event, the Pole Award
and these laps led were the first since his title-winning 2024
season.
Closing fast was
Wallace, the winner of both non-points races at Tri-County Speedway
last November in her first two starts in the series, and the
Concord, North Carolina driver took the top spot on lap four.
From
there, her advantage was relatively comfortable for quite some time,
until another challenger emerged.
Payton, who rode
much of the opening circuits in fourth position, was conserving his
tires and once the No. 64 Fauquier Stitch Studio / Donovan Asphalt
Paving / Total Stormwater Solutions LLC / Blue Ridge Seafood
Restaurant / McElligott Performance & Design / Payton Racing
Chevrolet made it to second began making up to a couple tenths of a
second of ground on Wallace each lap.
Inside 10 laps to go, he started making his move, searching
both outside and inside for a way by for the lead.
A pivotal moment
came with three laps remaining when both drivers, side by side,
encountered the No. 42 Drive 2 Thrive Coaching / Mello Fello
Motorsports Pontiac driven by Elkton, Maryland’s Rob Hindt, which
had been running into some mechanical and electrical troubles.
The two leaders ran out of room and Wallace’s car was the
unfortunate victim in this instance, spinning exiting turn four.
On the late restart, Payton cleared new contender, two-time 
series
champion Harvey Harrison, and went on to grab his second career and
second straight Shenandoah victory.
“We certainly
picked up where we left off,” an elated Payton upon climbing out
in victory lane recapped. “We
had a good car all day and tried to play the long game because I
know a lot of them are going to take off and use up everything
they’ve got and I could slowly reel them back in. I
can get this thing to turn on a dime and that’s all you can ever
ask for, just getting back to the gas.”
The
driver who is originally from nearby Summit Point, West Virginia and
now resides in Winston-Salem, North Carolina offered a few short
thoughts on what occurred toward the end of the first race.
“We were both
trying to use lapped cars to our advantage and it’s short track
racing. Definitely more
beating and banging than I anticipated.
I got into Brent early on coming off of four just barely and
I thought that was going to be the worst of it.”
Harrison achieved a
runner-up result while Nelson rounded out the podium.
Wallace had to
settle for a fourth-place outcome to start things off.
“I’ll give it
to him, he had a strong car,” the driver with past starts in
NASCAR O’Reilly, Truck, and ARCA Series commented.
“He did what anybody else would do, whether there’s a
rule or not on the passing, he saw an opening down at the bottom,
drove in, and I don’t feel like he was clear.”
For the second 50
lapper, Payton drew the pole with Wallace’s No. 19 Dan Althoff
Trucking / JDH Engineering / J4 Truss / The Also-Ran Broadcast / 
MW
Pressure Washing / D2 Motorsports Chevrolet starting along the
outside. A few early
yellows, both brought out by Renick, West Virginia’s Brian
Harrison in his No. 15 Harrison’s Welding / Harrison’s
Motorsports Chevrolet that was suffering with brakes and handling
issues, kept the field bunched up to start off.
Despite that fact,
Wallace took command on lap three and stretched her lead to as many
as four seconds. Further
behind, Payton seemed to be playing a similar strategy to the first
race, hanging back in fourth position and then beginning to pounce
as the laps continued. He
was up to the runner-up spot by halfway, but this time was not able
to make up the difference and Wallace cruised to her first win at
Shenandoah.
“Second
race was amazing,” Wallace indicated.
“That was the biggest thing, getting the lead (early) and
once I was able to get around (Payton) on the outside I felt like we
would really have something for him because in that first race he
was very competitive and fast on the high side.”
Not only was there
perseverance from the mishap toward the conclusion of the first race
but also an issue they discovered and had to adapt to from early in
the weekend.
“I knew that our
right front shock went out and knew these guys might be saving their
tires until the end so if we had a big enough lead then we could
hold on for the win,” Wallace continued.
“I really appreciate (team owners) Jeremy Mayfield and
Donnie Doster and (crew chief) Todd Parrott for helping me with
everything. Took a lot
of work and now we’re going home with a piece of hardware.”
Payton was in
agreement with the result of the second main event, albeit not a win
in both but an exceptional start to the season.
“Lap times proved
it, for a good 30 laps we were running almost identical to Chrissy.
She just got too far out and I couldn’t do anything about
it. Lapped traffic was
the usual struggle. We
had a good weekend; I can’t complain with a win and a second.
We’ve got some work to do to head to Lonesome Pine, but
we’ll be there.”
Perhaps the most
entertaining battle in the final race of the evening was for third
between the two most experienced drivers in the field where the
SCSCS days of old were like new again.
“Racing with
Harvey brought back memories of him and I at Columbus Motor
Speedway,” third place finisher for the second time, Brent Nelson,
recalled. “We ran, I
don’t know, 100 laps probably side by side there where you
couldn’t put a piece of paper between us.
Tonight was fun. We
can roll the car on the trailer all in one piece.
We’ve got some homework to do to be prepared to go to
Lonesome Pine and hope we have a better showing.
In the short run we were good, but the longer we ran it was
weird. On one end I was
tight, on the other end I was loose, so we have to come to a happy
medium and maybe we can put the whole package together.”
“We had a
blast,” Harvey Harrison, driver of the No. 35 John 3:16 Ford,
added after earning second and fourth place results running on tires
from last year. “Brent
and I have raced together for years and we trust each other.
Every once in a while we may rub a little bit, but tonight it
was all good clean fun. I
don’t think either one of us had anything for the top two cars.
When I tried to catch them I was heating the tires up so bad
that I started sliding and getting loose.
We had a blessed night. This
is a good clean fun series and good people to race with.
The main thing is everybody is loading them up and trying to
get ready for the next one.”
“You can’t win
them all, but if you can finish strong, and have good fun with your
friends and race clean, that’s what it’s all about.”
Rounding out the
top five with a best career performance in both races was an
ecstatic Dylan Godinez originally from Reading, Pennsylvania and now
residing in Conover, North Carolina, driving the No. 57 Ashton
Racing Chevrolet for this event.
Local favorite
Larry Frame from Yellow Spring, West Virginia was also on hand to
begin his third year in the series in the No. 80x Precision Auto
Collision / Riverside Auto Parts / Nelson Motorsports Chevrolet.
His seventh-place finishes featured the best lap times he has
ever recorded at Shenandoah Speedway in multiple appearances.
With bonuses
collected for leading the most laps and at halfway in both races,
Wallace leads by a slim 10-point margin over Payton going into the
next event on Saturday, May 2nd at a familiar site to the
series in Coeburn, Virginia but yet another track she has not raced
at previously.
“Looking forward
to Lonesome Pine, and hopefully can sit on a pole there and win a
race too,” Wallace looked ahead.
“I’ve seen that they’ve revamped it and it looks like a
killer fast track. I
think it’s going to be a really competitive track with even more
cars there so I’m looking forward to going there.”
More information
can be found on the Super Cup Stock Car Series official website supercupstockcarseries.com,
on Facebook (search Super Cup Stock Car Series), Twitter (@SCSCSRacing),
Instagram (SCSCS_Racing), and https://www.youtube.com/SCSCSRacing.
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