Even With an Already-Full Plate, Trevor Ward Looking Toward 2026 SBS Championship

Ward aiming for higher after nearly winning 2025 South Boston Speedway Late Model title

By Joe Chandler

Director, Public Relations

South Boston Speedway

SOUTH BOSTON, VA (March 12, 2026) – To say that Trevor Ward has a lot on his plate is a huge understatement.

Even with a stack of responsibilities, there is no mistaking his excitement as he returns to South Boston Speedway to compete for a track championship he narrowly missed last year.

“I’m really looking forward to ramping it up and trying to pick up where we left off last year at South Boston Speedway and try to put another good year together,” Ward said. “We’re going to come in battling hard the first race on March 21.”

Ward returns to full-time competition in South Boston’s Hitachi Energy Late Model Stock Car division.

Trevor Starts his Season on March 21. Join us for URW Race Day

While he saw a ton of success last year, his 2026 campaign will be a different season for Ward. For the first time he has a partner, Mike Bledsole, a partnership he feels can elevate the efforts of his Trevor Ward Motorsports team.

“Mike Bledsole and I have gone in together and built a car,” Ward explained. “This is something I’ve never done before. We’re going to race at South Boston Speedway with it. I can’t thank Mike enough. We have been friends a long time and we believe in each other. I’d like to get us in Victory Lane at South Boston Speedway.”

Ward had an outstanding 2025 season at South Boston Speedway with six wins and 14 Top-5 finishes in his 17 starts. He was the runner-up in the 2025 title chase, finishing one position and two points behind champion Peyton Sellers in the final points race of the season.

“That was the first track championship I ever tried to tackle in my career,” Ward pointed out. “Sometimes you’ve got to figure out how to lose one (a championship) before you can win one. We’ve gotten that out of the way now and we can try to tackle the next one.”

While there was a lot of success through the 2025 season there was also disappointment. Ward appeared to be on his way to winning the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville for the second time but a penalty for jumping a late-race restart derailed that effort.

“I feel like I failed and came up short,” Ward said of the misfortune. “I put the team behind on the restart and it was upsetting because I knew we had the car, I knew we had the driver, I knew we had everything in place to do it and the strategy to do it. I wanted to cap off that big season we had at South Boston Speedway with a really good finish or win at Martinsville. I’m ready to rebound from that, get back in gear, and do it all over again.

He made two starts on the CARS Tour after that with Nelson Motorsports, qualifying on the outside pole for the event at Tri-County Speedway and finishing sixth at North Wilkesboro.

“The 2025 season was one of the biggest seasons I’ve ever had in racing,” Ward pointed out. “I ran 28 or 30 races last year. That was the first time we had ever tackled that kind of mission.”

The off-season was tremendously busy and sometimes stressful for Ward and his Trevor Ward Motorsports organization as his success brought new and additional work to his business, including housing and supporting driver Brandon Lopez who competes on the CARS Tour.

“From a team and branding standpoint we’ve had a really successful off-season as far as our business and customer base goes,” he pointed out. “We put together a deal to house the cars that Brandon Lopez drives on the CARS Tour. We will do the whole CARS Tour season with them. There are four races that conflict with South Boston’s schedule, which is a nail right now that is driving into my foot. We’re still working on trying to figure out what we’re going to do to organize that and run the season for me at South Boston. We’ll get through it when the time comes.”

Playing a key role in Ward’s success on the track and on the business-side is Corbin Mackie who serves as Ward’s car chief at the track.

“The two of us put a lot together to make this all happen,” Ward said. “It’s hard to beat a life-long friendship like I’ve had with Corbin. He’s been a super-big part of my success along the way. Corbin has been my right-hand man since Day One. He’s learned with me and failed with me and has had success with me.”

The pair have worked together since 2018. They went to school together and have been friends since they were in the second grade.

“We’ve had a lot of success and a lot of ups and downs,” Mackie remarked. “I think the years of struggle have put us where we are today.”

As far as the off-season work is concerned, Mackie said he and Ward have been “wide open.”

“We’ve put ourselves in a position to be able to take the customer work in, and it’s really been a blessing that we have a lot of teams including some of the bigger teams like Nelson Motorsports trust us. I think we’ve hung something like nine bodies for customers. We built a new car for ourselves, and we built a new car for Brandon Lopez. I think it’s all a testament to the time and work we put into the cars.”

As if all of this wasn’t enough, Ward was one of the participants in Kaulig Racing’s reality TV competition “Race for the Seat.” It was a good experience, and Ward learned some valuable things from it, but it could have been more.

“It was very hard for me to adapt, and I didn’t do so well on the show as far all of the things that were involved,” Ward explained. “I learned a lot of things to work on to be better even in my world of racing. I wish I could have been better, but I think it made me a better person, a better spokesman.”

Ward admitted that during the time he was involved with the competition his mind was on other things.

“The whole time I was on that deal I was thinking how far behind I was getting on my personal work,” he noted. “I really didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I wish I could have because I was thinking the whole time I was getting behind and I wasn’t doing what I needed to be doing at the house.

If I get to do it again, I’ll definitely make it more enjoyable and put more things in place to be done before I go.”

For Ward and Mackie, the focus now is on the 100-lap race for the Hitachi Energy Late Model Stock Car Division that will be part of the Saturday, March 21 season-opening URW Race Day King of the Modifieds event.

The URW Race Day King of the Modifieds event will be headlined by a 125-lap race for the SMART Modified Tour that pays $20,000 to win and the 100-lap Late Model Stock Car race. A 35-lap race for the competitors of the Southern Ground Pounders Vintage Racing Club will round out the season-opening event.

Advance tickets are priced at $20 each. Tickets at the gate on race day will be $25 each. Seniors age 65 and older, military, healthcare workers and students (with ID) can purchase tickets at the advance ticket price at the gate only on the day of the event.