LONG POND, Penn. — With only three top-20 finishes in the first 11 races of the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season, Anthony Alfredo knew that he and his Vikings Motorsports team needed to make some changes.
“We kind of had a slow start to the season and just had to take a look at things and start building from square one again about six weeks ago,” Alfredo said after Saturday’s (June 13) race at Pocono Raceway.
That period of rebuilding finally paid off at Pocono, as Alfredo brought his No. 96 car home with a season-best sixth-place finish.
But it wasn’t just the finish where Alfredo shined. He was one of the best cars the entire weekend, as he posted the third-fastest time in practice and qualified 12th. He ran inside the top 10 all day with an average running position of eighth, and at one point in stage two, Alfredo passed Sam Mayer for second and had a brief chance at taking the lead from eventual winner Justin Allgaier.
From start to finish, Pocono was the kind of performance Alfredo had been waiting for.
“We’ve had some good days and we’ve had some days that went well in practice and qualifying, but we didn’t execute in the race,” Alfredo said. “So to execute practice, qualifying and the race this weekend and put a whole race together feels really good, and that’s what we need to be doing every week.”
There was a moment in the final stage that nearly ended in disaster for Alfredo, as he was involved in a crash with 12 laps to go but escaped without taking significant damage.
“I had a ‘Blaney moment’ on the radio, so my apologies to everyone listening. Alfredo joked. “But I just got really frustrated because I got turned in the wall down the straightaway, and then the same car (Sammy Smith) wrecked me into [turn] 2. Thankfully I was able to make the damage as little as possible.
“I got the wall pretty hard, knocked the toe out a little bit, messed the right side up a tiny bit. But we were able to continue on and I didn’t lose much track position from the timing of the caution, thankfully.”
By rebounding to finish sixth, Alfredo scored his fourth top-20 finish in a row, more than doubling his total in his first 11 starts with Viking. The No. 96 team is on the rise, and Alfredo is confident about the upcoming stretch of races on the left and right turns.
“(San Diego’s) a wild card race,” Alfredo said. “Sonoma’s one of my favorite road courses and I’m always fast there, just haven’t had a race go my way. So I’m optimistic about the next two weeks being races where we can run top 10.”
A Chase appearance probably isn’t in the cards, as Alfredo sits 17th in points and 113 points behind 12th with nine races left before the postseason. But such a comeback isn’t impossible yet, and if Alfredo keeps putting together performances like Pocono, he’ll get and closer and closer to closing that gap.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
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