By Richie Murray
Speedway, Indiana (February 26, 2026)………Brecken Reese, who was impressive in part-time duty on the USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship trail one year ago, is going full-time with the series in 2026 aboard the Jeff Reese owned No. 20Q.
The 19-year-old Canyon, Texas native made his first 16 career USAC National Midget feature starts during the 2025 campaign, finishing 14th in the standings while driving the family car as well as for Grady Chandler, garnering three top-10 results, including bests of 4th at Bloomington Speedway, 7th at The Dirt Track at IMS, and 10th at Bakersfield.
Getting his feet wet in USAC National Midget racing was challenging for Reese, but it’s paid plenty of dividends with how much knowledge and experience he’s gained over the past year. Now, he’s ready to put his skills to the test on the series’ upcoming 29-race tour.
“I learned a lot racing with these guys,” Reese acknowledged. “They’re very, very good, and all the guys who do it full-time are super quick and hard to keep up with. I’m just trying to learn how to put a full night together. It’s definitely cool to be able to commit and chase the series and see where we stack up.”
The process continues into the 2026 season for Reese. That said, now, he’ll be seeing many of the racetracks on the schedule for a second time. One of Reese’s stated goals was to find his share of redemption at these places where they now have a notebook to learn from and build off of.
“I think our biggest struggle was just running at all these new places,” Reese admitted. “I felt like it would take us a full night to figure it out, and I think that’s what’s going to help us this year. Most places on the schedule this season, we hit at least once last year. Then, just taking everything I’ve learned from last year racing against these guys, seeing what they do and how they handle stuff. I think that’s going to be huge. Getting the chance to race against this kind of competition changes you a lot.”
Case in point. Last year at Bloomington during USAC Indiana Midget Week, all Reese got was a single hot lap session in before the rain came and washed away the night. However, at the makeup date 2.5 months later, Reese and team showed up with a vengeance, laying down the third quickest lap in qualifying before finishing fourth in the feature after running as high as second.
“That was a really cool night,” Reese recalled. “It was our first night in an all-new LynK (chassis) and we didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never been there before outside of a hot lap session, but I was able to click off a really good time and that just built our whole night. It was the first time we really had speed to keep up with those guys. You’re pretty nervous after building a new car from the ground up pretty much, but that night, I finally got to experience what it was like to start up front and run up front with those guys.”
Reese, who works for his father’s Cierra Towing & Crushing company away from the racetrack, has captured numerous victories in recent years in micro sprint and 305 Sprint Car competition. In 2025, he earned the POWRi Stock Non-Wing Keith Kunz Motorsports Challenge Championship, including a victory in the KKM Challenge race last August at U.S. 24 Speedway in Logansport, Indiana.
Brecken didn’t particularly grow up in a racing family, per se, but his father and car owner, Jeff Reese, raced karts on the local level in Texas. Brecken, himself, got behind the wheel for the first time at age nine in an outlaw kart, winning three titles before venturing into micro racing, and to where he is today.
As far as his racing heroes, it’s Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson, a pair of generational talents who’ve had their fair share of success in USAC as well as in NASCAR, and everything else they’ve ever strapped into. Witnessing them in action at the Tulsa Shootout and the Chili Bowl Nationals certainly made a deep impression on young Brecken along with an up close and personal encounter.
“I remember the people who came down to run micros, like Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson, and all those guys who were running a sprint car and came over to run micros,” Reese said. “Getting to race against them, I think that really showed a lot to me. By just seeing how good they are, it inspired me to want to grow and continue to get better in order to get to that level.”
Reese begins his first full USAC National Midget run in 2026 beginning with back-to-back nights at Indiana’s Kokomo Speedway for the Kokomo Grand Prix on April 24-25.