For the third time in the 2026 ARCA Menards Series season, there was a first-time winner. Bandana-wearing pizza man Andy Jankowiak triumphed at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, April 25.
Jankowiak, a 38-year-old from Buffalo, NY, scored his first win in his 48th career start and earned KLAS Motorsports its first win as well.
Following the race weekend at Talladega, Frontstretch ARCA editor Mark Kristl spoke with Jankowiak to talk about how he wheeled his No. 71 Chevrolet to the victory, his post-race celebration, his outlook for the 2026 season and more.
Mark Kristl, Fronstretch: You told the broadcast afterward that you hadn’t woken up yet to fully realize you won. Have you woken up yet to realize you’re an ARCA winner?
Andy Jankowiak: It still feels weird, honestly. Everyone says it feels like you’re dreaming. I’ve never felt something that surreal because that’s not something that a lot of racecar drivers get to experience. Certainly, a lot less get to live through that with their race team. I’ve been so lucky with what’s happened to me, racing for a great team to make an opportunity like that work for us. It’s crazy, very hard to accept.
Kristl: I bet you gladly took that trophy home.
Jankowiak: Funny enough, I gifted it to team owner Kevin Lapierre. He snuck it back onto the hauler, so now it is back in the shop. He wanted it to be with the race team.
The victory is the accomplishment of a lifetime. I hope there’s more and bigger things down the road, but that was certainly the biggest moment of my life. To be able to share that with my team, I carry a lot of weight as the driver doing my job. It means a lot to me and feels very satisfying for sure.
Kristl: When in the race did you know you had a shot to win?
Jankowiak: Early in the race, I switched to the outside line trying to lead the pack. I was not good at being out front; just something with our package was not the same as last year. I was holding our line up, so they split me and put me in the middle. We fell back early, we lost the lead pack, and we were back there around 13th. There were a couple of times I thought there was going to be a wreck in front of me. We fought and clawed, but we did not have the pure speed to drive back up there. So, every restart, I was calming myself down and just maximizing my opportunities while racing two-wide was the way we advanced.
We kept getting in the right lines. I’ve had days where I had a faster car but didn’t get the breaks in traffic. In the second half of this race, we kept getting in the right lines. Once I got closer to the front, I waited for them to mix it up a bit.
The fan favorite Garrett “Cleetus McFarland” Mitchell had the fastest car in the race, leading 19 laps. So ahead of the final restart, Jankowiak had his spotter work with Cleetus McFarland’s spotter so they could team up.
Kristl: How did you avoid The Big One?
Jankowiak: I really made a mental note, based on our car chief Andy Seuss’ advice of keep learning, during the track walk, that the Talladega apron has a lot of banking, more than Daytona International Speedway. I made this mental note that if I had to, I could drive on it. I stood with both feet, one foot on the track, one on the apron, sizing it up. I could drive down there without hurting the car. I saw a car spin in front of me, I let off, and I turned left as hard as I could to drive it onto the apron. We lost the momentum, so we lost a few spots, but we avoided any damage. Looking back, that was one of those things that went our way this time.
Kristl: Cleetus congratulated you in victory lane. What did he say?
Jankowiak: He congratulated me. He was happy for me but he was second-guessing whether he should have made that block. Gus Dean had a good run, so he might’ve beaten us both without that block. Cleetus probably thought that if he stayed with me, I would have pushed him. I was going to try to get to his quarter-panel, but I don’t think I had enough speed. He was so strong, I don’t think I could’ve gotten by him without contact, losing both our momentum.
[Cleetus] was second-guessing that, but we all have races like that. Give credit to him. I was shoving him hard down the backstretch and he kept it straight. He’s a racecar driver. It took a little while for us to figure him out, but he’s come in and obviously made a lot of gains. He nearly won the race.
Kristl: What was the celebration like? Talladega is known for its partying.
Jankowiak: We got so drunk. I’m from Buffalo, our bars are open ‘til 4 a.m., so we know how to get after it pretty good. We were probably out ‘til 3 a.m. We did some karaoke too. When I woke up the next morning, it sounded better than I thought it originally did.
One of my favorite wins was at Atlantic City, a known party town. Now, we won at Talladega, the top partying racetrack. I seem to win these marquee events that have a good celebration attached.
Jankowiak stayed to watch the NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday.
Kristl: Anyone else surprise you by congratulating you?
Jankowiak: Jesse Love came to victory lane. We raced together, we talk a lot at the track, and we have the Whelen partnership so we have a charity go-kart race. Michael Waltrip and Ken Schrader both congratulated me, so that was cool.
I saw Carson Hocevar on Saturday night, the night before his win, and he spotted me on the Boulevard while I was celebrating. He made a point to congratulate me; he couldn’t have been kinder.
My phone has just been off the hook. I had over 400 text messages and I haven’t even looked at my Facebook messages. It’s been really overwhelming, in a good way.
So many people have played a role in helping me keep racing, with the way we got into this, the dominoes it took to get to this, it’s an endless list, so I’m indebted and grateful to probably over 1,000 people. If you took away any of them, it probably wouldn’t have worked, and it’s just crazy. I’ve been racing for years and I won by a car [length], so I hate to not give back any favors. If not for all of them, I might not have that extra car [length] to win at Talladega.
Kristl: You and Corey Day each scored your first career wins on Saturday. Years ago, you two tangled at Kansas Speedway. How ironic is that?
Jankowiak: I haven’t seen Corey to congratulate him, but when I see him next, I will. Things happened on the racetrack and I’ve let it go. He’s done an excellent job being in the hunt all year in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. I never root against anyone, so that was a cool deal.
Honestly, it is cool that all three races had a first-time winner. For me, that was a huge accomplishment. Hopefully, we all go on to win a whole lot more races and have bigger things in our careers.
You never know, there may someday be a trivia question about Corey, Carson and me winning for the first time the same weekend at Talladega.
Kristl: You’re fourth in points. Does this change your outlook for the 2026 season?
Jankowiak: We’re already going to Watkins Glen International. We want to add Toledo Speedway to our schedule, but we must move quickly to do so. We’d like to add at least Toledo, Michigan International Speedway and Pocono Raceway, and then make an assessment at that point. We’d look then at the season, the money and whether it would make sense to keep running. We were already trying to add Michigan and Pocono before this happened.
Toledo was not on our original plan. It’d be nice to get some new partners involved to see if we can make some more races to stay in this points hunt.
The championship feels open this year. Even if we make those other three races, we’d have to add Berlin Raceway and Elko Speedway before the July 4 weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. It’d be a tall task.
I’d love to commit to Toledo even if we could get some money. Hey, tell your readers, we’re digging looking for a little bit of help.
We could be in this thing [the title hunt]. We were running third at Phoenix Raceway when the car broke. We had a good run at Kansas before we got into trouble there. We’ve shown speed at different types of racetracks so we can run well at those other three racetracks.
We want to run well, but it’s a money game. Obviously, we want to capitalize on this opportunity. We just won the second-biggest race of the year.
Mark Kristl joined Frontstretch at the beginning of the 2019 NASCAR season. He is the site's ARCA Menards Series editor. Kristl is also an Eagle Scout and a proud University of Dayton alum.
Was really glad to see Andy J pick up the win. Hope he gets the $$$ so he can run the rest of the year.