Anthony Alfredo Enjoying Successful Season with Viking, Hopeful For 2027 Return

Viking Motorsports’ first year as a two-car NASCAR O’Reilly Series team has been a smashing success. Parker Retzlaff and the No. 99 team qualified for the Chase in their first season together, while Anthony Alfredo and the No. 96 team have come on strong in the second half of the year and have started to contend for wins.

It was a rocky start for Alfredo and the No. 96 team, however, as a mechanical failure in the season opener at Daytona International Speedway in February forced them to miss the show (Alfredo ultimately drove a third car for Alpha Prime Racing and finished 11th). A tough start indeed, but the team wasn’t down and out for long.

“I think what’s more important is the way we were able to rebound from that and go back to the racetrack and start just trying to build this team up, right?” Alfredo told Frontstretch. “That was super unfortunate, and it was a mechanical failure that took us out of the race.

“It wasn’t raw speed, and we took the same exact car at Talladega and the second Daytona, qualified top 10 in both of them and had a shot to win those races.”

A 10th-place finish at Phoenix Raceway in March marked Alfredo’s first top 10 of the year, and he followed it up with a second top 10 at Dover Motor Speedway in May, a race that Alfredo cited as the turning point of the season.

“Really feel like it all came together at Dover in [May],” Alfredo said. “We went there and faced a lot of adversity as a team. We didn’t practice well; we didn’t qualify well. We made big changes to the car. We’re a lot better in the race, but we lost power steering at one point, then we got caught up in a wreck and had some damage and had to pit a ton of times.

“We were able to rally for a top 10, and it was like that race was one where we felt like if we can overcome all that was thrown at us that day and get a top 10, when we go to the track and things go smoothly and we execute well, we could certainly be better than that, and that’s what we’ve been doing the last few weeks.”

After Dover, the good runs kept on coming. Next was a sixth-place finish at Pocono Raceway in June after Alfredo ran top 10 all day, followed by a fourth-place finish at Sonoma Raceway two weeks later. Top fives in the drafting races at EchoPark Speedway and Daytona in the summer capped off a successful second half of the regular season.

“I’m super proud of everyone’s hard work, putting this deal together late in the game and really getting our feet under us and getting to a good point so quickly,” Alfredo said. “Like to go from having no cars, no employees, like just no team at all, and then go to running inside the top 10 consistently by the summer was really rewarding, because that’s what everyone was working toward.

“And then now I think we’ve shown we’re a Chase caliber team. We just didn’t start the year on the right foot, but I think now we have certainly some really great momentum going, and that’s how we’re going to fire off in 2027.”

Alfredo and the No. 96 team’s efforts culminated with the best effort yet at the start of The Chase, a sixth-place finish at Darlington Raceway that saw him pass Carson Kvapil for the lead and win stage two by multiple seconds.

“It was super fun,” Alfredo said. “The guys built an incredible car, and we were fast there in the spring, honestly, but we just faced some troubles on pit road and couldn’t maintain the track position. But we passed, I think, the most cars in that race. …

“You don’t get cars like that that often. But to go toe-to-toe with the best teams and be better than them was a big confidence boost for all these guys, and they deserve that. And especially in The Chase when everyone’s going to bring their best stuff to the track, and to be a non-Chase car and go just kick their butts like that was really cool.”

A big confidence boost indeed. After the sixth at Darlington, Alfredo told the media that “if we run like this every week in ’27, we’re going to win some races for dang sure.”

But while Alfredo hopes to be back with Viking in 2027, as of the time of his interview with Frontstretch at World Wide Technology Raceway on Sept. 12, there’s no signed contract in hand just yet.

“We’re still working some things through,” Alfredo explained. “Obviously we need to keep growing the business side of the race team, bring in some new partners, but I think with the way we’re running, a lot of people want to be affiliated with us and be on the car, whether it’s these final few races this year and next year.

“But the team really wants me back and I’d love to be back. That’s certainly the goal and the expectation right now, is to be driving here next year.”

If Alfredo does return to Viking for 2027, it would mark the first time he’s spent consecutive full-time seasons with the same team. Since his return to O’Reilly after a full-time Cup Series gig with Front Row Motorsports in 2021, Alfredo drove for Our Motorsports in 2022, switched to BJ McLeod Motorsports for 2023, went back to Our in 2024 and drove for Young’s Motorsports in 2025 before ending up at Viking in 2026.

“I hope it all works out because to be able to build some momentum and go into the following season with a notebook, with the same people and existing chemistry, it’s going to be hard to beat that, and that’s going to allow us to be very successful,” Alfredo said.

It’s been years and years of getting acclimated to new surroundings each offseason and by time cars hit the track come February. Alfredo hopes next year will be different.

“Previously, it’s like I started from scratch every year, and by the time things start clicking, the season’s over,” Alfredo explained. “And I feel like this year we really have the opportunity to do some things that are special and could turn a lot more heads next year, especially with where we’re already at.”