Kendale Paul Hunts Down Kalisto for ISRA Kentucky Opener Victory

The ISRA Tuned-Up Truck Series presented by Sim Gaming Expo launched its inaugural season at Kentucky Speedway with an intense 125-lap contest that tested chassis balance, tire management, and strategic discipline. Marking a major departure from the league’s previous open-wheel machinery—such as the high-downforce Lotus 79—the new fendered stock trucks required drivers to drastically alter their racecraft. Operating heavy, low-downforce vehicles, competitors could no longer rely on front and rear wings to stick the truck to the asphalt; instead, they had to keep their machines yawed out through corner center, controlling slip angles through delicate throttle modulation. Track conditions at Kentucky exacerbated the physical challenge, as hot daytime surface temperatures rendered the abrasive, un-reconfigured pavement exceptionally slick. The circuit’s asymmetrical layout created two distinct driving environments: Turns 1 and 2 offered a wide-open, multi-groove sweeping arc, whereas Turns 3 and 4 demanded heavy braking, precise diamonding of the entry, and commitment to the flat bottom groove. Compounding the setup strain, league officials granted crew chiefs control over fuel-injection mapping, adding a mandated extra 5% horsepower that yielded an additional 3 to 4 mph down the straightaways. In qualifying, Kendale Paul mastered the slick conditions to earn the pole in his No. 78 Toyota with a time of 30.996 seconds. Paul shared the front row with Tony Blake Brewer, while open-wheel veterans Vern Hawkins, Chris Ragan, and Ryan O’Donohue rounded out the top five in a competitive 25-truck field.

When the green flag dropped, Vern Hawkins executed a textbook launch, powering past Paul into Turn 1 to assume the early lead. As Hawkins built a quick half-second cushion, two distinct philosophies emerged across the field. While mid-pack contenders engaged in aggressive early battles, Paul adopted a long-view conservation strategy. The pole-sitter intentionally dropped back to fifth place during the opening laps, allowing his tires to heat up gradually on the abrasive asphalt while saving tread depth for the end of the fuel stint. Further back, Austin Hund’s truck made steady progress from his 11th-place starting spot, carving through traffic alongside Ragan. Drivers quickly learned the nuances of stock truck draft dynamics, using side-drafting down the backstretch to stall an opponent’s momentum before diving into the braking zone of Turn 3. As the run stretched past Lap 20, tire degradation began to equalize the field. Paul initiated his charge back toward the front, steadily running down Hawkins, whose early pace had heavily worn his right-side rubber. By Lap 35, Paul executed a classic Kentucky slide-job off Turn 4 to snatch the lead, while Hawkins brushed the outside wall off Turn 2 while attempting to hold his quarter-panel momentum.

By Lap 40, severe tire degradation triggered the initial green-flag pit window as drivers including Hawkins, Brewer, and O’Donohue elected to pit for fresh rubber to undercut the leaders. However, the race’s strategic trajectory shifted dramatically on Lap 46 when the first caution flag of the night flew. Contact on the frontstretch apron near pit entry between Albert Welzker and Matt Wagner caught early pitters in a precarious trap, pinning drivers like Hawkins and O’Donohue a lap down. Fortunately for those caught behind the pace car, wave-around rules enabled trucks that had extended their stints or scrambled through pit road during the yellow cycle to unlap themselves and rejoin the tail of the lead lap ahead of the Lap 48 restart, completely reshaping the running order.

Capitalizing on clean air and the single-file wave-around restart structure, Lionel Calisto—nicknamed ‘Little Train’—initiated a stunning mid-race charge. Having lined up 21st on the grid, Calisto leveraged aggressive restart positioning to locomotive his way directly to the front. Once in clear air, Calisto laid down blistering lap times, opening up a two-second cushion over the field. Behind him, a fierce four-truck drafting pack featuring last season’s historic F1 champion Matt Taylor, Hund, Wagner, and Paul engaged in a tactical stalemate. The pursuers traded lines and executed side-draft passes, attempting to keep Calisto within reach without prematurely destroying their second set of tires.

As the race entered its final third between Laps 80 and 90, the leaders faced their final green-flag pit stop cycle. Kentucky’s sweeping, curved pit entry presented immense danger under hot, slick conditions, demanding precise deceleration on the apron. Broadcast commentary briefly misidentified a spinning truck on pit road as Matt Taylor; however, official scoring confirmed that Taylor executed a clean entry, maintained a solid pace, and recovered smoothly to secure a fifth-place finish. The pit road casualty was actually Jim Herrick, who overcooked his entry speed, spun across the slick apron, made wall contact, and was slapped with a pit entry control penalty. Strategy timing diverged sharpest among the leaders: Calisto pitted early on Lap 80 to defend his track position, whereas Kendale Paul strictly executed his pre-calculated race blueprint by stretching his stint to Lap 90. Paul’s patience rewarded him with a crucial three-lap tire freshness delta for the final 35-lap sprint.

Rejoining the track behind Calisto, Paul unleashed the full capability of his fresher rubber, systematically erasing Calisto’s lead. On Lap 109—with 16 laps remaining—Paul made his winning move, driving deep underneath Calisto through Turns 3 and 4, utilizing the flat apron line to clear the No. 2 for good. As Calisto’s earlier hard charging caused his tires to fade, both Hund and Wagner closed in to contest the podium. In a dramatic late-race duel for second, Wagner and Hund traded paint coming off Turn 4, both pancaking their right-side body panels against the outside wall before Hund secured the position. Meanwhile, late-race lap times underscored the incredible track evolution, as Ryan O’Donohue recorded the overall fastest lap of the race with a 30.996-second flyer—matching Paul’s pole-qualifying time to the thousandth of a second. Kendale Paul took the checkered flag cleanly to claim victory in Round 1, followed by Hund in second, Wagner in third, Calisto in fourth, and Taylor rounding out the top five. Post-race, Paul praised his disciplined strategy, noting that sticking to his calculated Lap 90 pit plan was the key to victory before looking ahead to the fence-running multi-groove oval at Homestead-Miami Speedway.