For a holiday weekend, there sure wasn’t a shortage of racers available. Team Johnson showed up first and got in a bunch of laps before Team Maddox arrived to heat things even more.
Mostly hotlapping and practice with Madeline Johnson having the most laps in practice. As expected, the practice and hotlapping got a little boring and many wanted to do some actual racing. So we setup a race with all six drivers, full rotation, no fueling, and 20-lap heats.
With juniors and adults in this one, it was going to be a team race between Team Johnson and Team Maddox. Racing with juniors is always interesting, especially with this bunch. Team Johnson had two junior drivers, Team Maddox had two junior drivers. So, one adult driver and two junior drivers for each team.
To make it fairer, we set the max lane voltage to 12v instead of 15v. The juniors could decide what voltage they wanted to run. The younger juniors settled on 9 or 10v. It was an IROC race using Jag Hobbies Augoran TR-3 cars, only slightly modified cars but fast and stuck.
With only one marshal to support the whole track, we had quite a few yellow flag situations but it worked out pretty well and everybody finished!
Superstar Junior driver, Abe Maddox bursted into the lead early on, leading the race for the first two heats with Jared Johnson a very close second. In the third of six heats, Jared took over the lead in the race and kept it from then on. In the fifth heat, Abe seemed to have trouble and would lose six laps to Jared. After the first two heats it looked like the boys were going to dominate things with Abe, Jared, and Mathew Johnson comfortably in the top three spots.
Shaylin Maddox was having none of that and fought hard to get into third place through heats 3 and 5 and looked like she was certain to hang on to the final podium spot. In an amazing performance, Madeline Johnson would win the fifth and the final sixth heat, catapulting her ahead of Shaylin and bagging the final podium spot in a very hard-fought and chaotic race.
Wow! A very impressive performance by everyone. Very cool to see the junior drivers focus so well and take advantage of opportunities to improve their results.
In the end, even though he would finish the race with the hardest car and one of the hardest lanes (red), Jared remained focused on the task at hand and held onto his solid lead, taking the checkered flag ahead of hard-charging junior, Abe Maddox. Shaylin Maddox narrowly missed the podium by just one lap and one point.
| Place | Name | Laps | Points | Total Time |
| 1 | Jared Johnson | 115 | 85 | 1038.928 |
| 2 | Abe Maddox | 110 | 72 | 1049.459 |
| 3 | Madeline Johnson | 93 | 60 | 1055.91 |
| 4 | Shaylin Maddox | 92 | 59 | 1060.096 |
| 5 | Matthew Johnson | 61 | 38 | 1144.309 |
| 6 | Grace Maddox | 69 | 34 | 1073.986 |
Awesome track day! Thank you all for supporting Stewart Raceway, especially on a holiday weekend!
Next Saturday is round 4 of the 2023 50/50 Xtreme Series. Right now I don’t have enough confirmed RSVPs for round 5, so round 4 could be the finale, we’ll see what happens.
Okay, shut up and drive!
Since we have a new driver in the mix and we’ve changed the layout of SR3, I’ve updated the 
Kathy and I wish all of you who participate in our racing program a very Happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful start to the Holiday Season!
Below is a summary of the current points standings for all “official” racing to date for the 2023 racing season.
With just one more month remaining in the 2023 season, this summary isn’t likely to change much. We have two more “official” races to complete before the end of 2023. Hopefully, we can conclude them before the end of the year and give out some of these well-deserved awards.