Alex Yankowski doesn’t have any wins this summer, but his consistent finishes near the front have him climbing the standings at both Utica-Rome Speedway and the national NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series points.
Yankowski, who turned 19 last month, has four top fives and nine top 10s in the 3 Bastards Brewing Modifieds division at Utica-Rome, a newly NASCAR-sanctioned half-mile dirt oval in Vernon, New York.
The driver from Covington-Township, Pennsylvania races at Utica-Rome on Friday nights and Fonda Speedway on Saturdays. He’s also currently third in Fonda’s Amsterdam Truck Center Modifieds division.
While also traveling around to other special shows throughout New England and Canada, Yankowski has finished in the top 10 in all 16 of his NASCAR-sanctioned races this summer, and in the top five eight times, putting him seventh in the NAAPWS Division I points standings.
He’s the highest ranking Division I driver without a win this season.
“It’s going good. I think we’ve been pretty consistent,” Yankowski said. “We haven’t won a race yet at Utica, which is a little bit frustrating, but we’ve been consistent there, which I think is more important than winning one race. A string of good runs is definitely more important.”
Yankowski credited his consistency this season with “good prep” in the shop.
“The cars are good. Just good maintenance and good people working on them,” he added.
Racing is all-in-the-family for Yankowski, and it has been for several decades.
His grandfather used to travel from Pennsylvania to New York during the summers when he was young to work on a farm. One of his relatives at the time owned a car they raced at nearby tracks.
Years later, when his grandfather came home for the fall, he bought his own race car. That car has now been in Yankowski’s family for three generations, and they’ve built a replica.
Seeing that car is what made Yankowski want to race himself.
“It’s just always something I wanted to do,” he said. “I started in go-karts at 4. After that it’s just been one thing after another.”
Yankowski said racing now is “definitely a family deal.”
The sport wasn’t something that came easy to the 19-year-old, but it’s never been something he could quit.
“At first it was definitely frustrating, but it was always something I wanted to do and something I really wanted to work at to get better at,” he said. “And it definitely was and still is a grind to get better and just keep digging with it.”
This is Yankowski’s second season racing at Utica — he finished third in the track’s points standings in 2022 — and just the second time in his career he’s raced full-time at a NASCAR-sanctioned track.
Last year, the team saw flashes of speed, which gave Yankowski hope heading into 2023.
“I feel like when we work on a program hard we get a little bit better, and now we have speed consistently,” he said. “I think we’re just going to keep working at it to have some consistent speed and just get a little bit faster.”
While Yankowski is enjoying his climb up the rankings of several championship races, he is still looking for that elusive win this summer. Reaching Victory Lane was the goal coming into the season, and it stays the goal every time he straps into the car.
The key, he said, is to keep working and never get too comfortable.
“We’ve put ourselves in position to win a good amount of races this year, and cautions didn’t fall our way, or lapped traffic, wrecks, just something,” he said. “We need to keep putting ourselves in position to just execute. That’s the biggest thing is just execute.
“I care more about winning races than anything else. I knew last year we were fast at times, we just needed to be fast all the time. We’re at least consistent now. We just want to go in and win some races. We’ve been knocking on the door, so we’re going to keep working at it and hopefully we get there soon.”
Racing will return to Utica-Rome Speedway on Friday.
