By T.J. Buffenbarger
(July 15, 2026) — With the first of four nights of racing completed at Eldora Speedway during the Kings Royal weekend here are my takeaways from the opening night of racing for the weekend.
• Eldora Speedway put its best foot forward on Wednesday night during both main events during the Double Down Duels. Both main events saw comers and goers throughout the field, tremendous racing for position, some of the best drivers in the world driving with their elbows up blasting around Eldora’s concrete wall, and event some hijinks during a restart between Corey Day and Giovani Scelzi after Scelzi was able to snooker Day during a restart to retake the lead.
After a year when the amount of carnage was the most talked about subject throughout the Kings Royal weekend, the hard work of a lot of people over the off season was evident as we saw a two-lane racetrack at Eldora that was relatively smooth and produced some tremendous racing.
While the box score will show Brent Marks leading all 26 laps that included a green/white/checkered finish, but the racing behind him was tremendous with Larson charging from the fifth row to a podium and a race for second on back that just kept producing tremendous side by side racing.
While the first feature was good, the second main was one of the best I’ve seen at Eldora in quite a while with Giovani Scelzi and Emerson Axsom racing side by side, trading the lead.
Once Corey Day joined the fray and took the lead away from Scelzi, the race with Scelzi and Axsom shifted to second position until a late race restart when Scelzi was able to get under Day for the lead, lighting a fire under Day to blast around the Eldora Speedway and give Scelzi a one finger salute as he went by, driving off to a lead that he would not relinquish.
With the modern Eldora schedule the double down duels might be the best night of racing of the year at the Big E, which is saying something when you have events like Kings Royal and 4-Crown Nationals. The deep inversions for the heat race and main event produced tremendous racing, and when the drivers and given a surface like we witnessed on Wednesday they rose to the occasion and produced a highly entertaining program.
• After the Brad Doty Classic on Tuesday night, I went to bed thinking that we would be hard pressed to find a better story than Bryce Lucius’ upset victory against the World of Outlaws.
Tyler Courtney’s second place finish is far from the underdog tale that Lucius’ conquest was but hit differently as Courtney scored a second-place finish at the same track he left in a helicopter one year ago wondering if he would ever race again.
Courtney has been a standout driver at Eldora with high profile wins in winged and non-wing sprint car events including the 4-Crown Nationals and a Kings Royal crown. Courtney has also seen some of the worst punishment Eldora can dish out, injuring his back on Kings Royal weekend in 2023 and having multiple serious injuries suffered in a terrifying accident in 2025 including fractured vertebrate and a brain bleed that impacted his vision.
After the incident Courtney took all the proper steps to recover, staying out of the driver’s seat for an extended period and putting in the work to regain strength. Whie Courtney’s comeback already saw him in victory lane during his first races back in Florida and at Haubstaudt with the World of Outlaws, but over the past two months has started to hit a consistent level of performance that we became used to before he was injured last season.
The biggest difference I saw was Courtney being that happy about finishing second in a feature event. The smile on Courtney’s face was a mile wide, and soon a second-place finish at Eldora will not garner the same reaction, for one night it was just another step forward and a small victory that was fun to witness.
• After watching an entire night of racing with most of the combatants we will see vying for a Kings Royal victory on Saturday night, I’m not sure that I would choose anyone as a standout favorite.
Typically leading into an Eldora weekend I’ll have three or four drivers (or less) in mind I feel are the leading candidates to wear the crown on Saturday. Nobody seemed overly dominant throughout the first night of racing as the leads in both main events were far from insurmountable.
Corey Day spoke about it in the post-race press conference when Matt Weaver asked him about the split format. Day mentioned there were so many good drivers and teams that it didn’t make that big of a difference because both sides of the program had 7-8 drivers that were contenders for victories on Wednesday.
My opinion might evolve differently as the weekend commences, but if tried to pin me down to one or two drivers that I felt were the favorites to win the crown on Saturday I would be hard pressed to give less than 10.
I’ll write more on how my opinion changes with this as the weekend goes on, but as of tonight I feel this is one of the most wide open Kings Royals in recent memory.