Who won Mustang Challenge 2026? Cole Loftsgard, Thomas Tait and Round 3 Racing
The 2026 Mustang Challenge North America season finished at COTA on 6 September. Final standings for both classes, plus the penalty that changed the last race.
Mustang Challenge North America finished its 2026 season at Circuit of the Americas on 5 and 6 September. Twelve rounds, two classes.
Cole Loftsgard won Dark Horse. Thomas Tait won Dark Horse Lites. Round 3 Racing won the entrants' championship in DH.
Here is how each of those was decided.
Dark Horse: Loftsgard won seven of twelve
Cole Loftsgard took seven wins from twelve starts and averaged 1.67 across the season. The title was settled well before COTA.
| Driver | Wins | Starts | Avg finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cole Loftsgard | 7 | 12 | 1.67 |
| Devin Anderson | 4 | 12 | 2.08 |
| Will Lucas | 1 | 12 | 4.00 |
| Sandy Satullo | 0 | 12 | 4.17 |
| Tate Pritt | 0 | 12 | 6.08 |
Devin Anderson was the only other multiple winner. He swept both COTA races. Between them the two drivers took eleven of the twelve DH wins.
Third place is a long way back. Anderson averaged 2.08 and Will Lucas averaged 4.00, across a full twelve-round season.
Dark Horse Lites: four winners, and a penalty in the last race
DHL went the other way. Four drivers won races. Nobody won more than two.
| Driver | Wins | Starts | Avg finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Tait | 2 | 12 | 2.92 |
| Chris Clarke | 1 | 12 | 3.42 |
| Nicholas Smither | 1 | 8 | 3.88 |
| Paolo Salvatore | 1 | 12 | 4.00 |
| Joseph Dederichs | 0 | 11 | 4.82 |
The last race of the year changed after the flag. Tait finished seventh overall in Race 2 and led DHL on the road. A post-race penalty dropped him to tenth. The class win went to Brad McCall, his only DHL win of 2026.
Two versions of that result exist. The timing feed published at the flag has Tait winning. The classification published after scrutineering does not. We store the second one.
Round 3 Racing won the entrants' title
Round 3 Racing finished ahead of TechSport Racing in the DH entrants' championship, with Wheelhouse Motorsports third. The margin was about 110 points.
How you count decides this one. Entrant championships score a team's best car in each race, not every car it enters. Wheelhouse ran the biggest DH entry all year, and if you add up every car they started they finish first. Score best-car-only, the way the championship actually scores, and Round 3 Racing win.
The two classes were different championships
Twelve rounds is enough to say something about the classes themselves.
DH was a two-driver fight that ended early. Loftsgard and Anderson took eleven of twelve wins and both averaged inside 2.1. Nobody else won more than once.
DHL stayed open all year. Four winners, and the top four separated by about one position of average finish.
Attrition was low in both. Most regulars started all twelve rounds.
We do not hold official points totals for this series, only finishing positions from every round. The tables above rank by wins and average finish, which produced the same order as the official standings for the top four in DH. Where the two disagree, the official standings are correct and these are not.
Figures computed from all twelve rounds of both classes in the RacerDB index. Driver names link to career pages.