2/28/2026
High Limit Racing
INEVITABLE: Tanner Thorson & Rod Gross Motorsports Building a Consistent Contender with High Limit
MOORESVILLE, NC. (February 28, 2026) – In 2024, the critics said he wouldn’t last a full season on tour, and boy, were they wrong. In 2025, the narrative flipped to his first national win being only a matter of time; and they were right twice. In 2026, Tanner Thorson is committed to continually improving his package and transforming the Rod Gross Motorsports No. 88 into a constant force with Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing.
“I think it was just a matter of putting all the pieces of the puzzle together,” said Thorson on his rise with RGM. “Having all of the right people in the right place with the right tools isn’t as easy as it sounds, we’ve had to work hard to get here.”
Although he is plenty experienced in chasing titles, as a 2016 USAC National Midget Champion, Thorson was new to a full-time winged racing national tour when he joined Rod & Nancy Gross at the beginning of 2024. That first campaign resulted in a 13th-place points finish with four top-five finishes and 15 top-10 results, while the one shining moment was when he topped a Gold Cup Race of Champions preliminary feature over Rico Abreu at Silver Dollar Speedway.
Coming back for year two in 2025, Thorson’s numbers improved drastically. He skyrocketed to fifth in the driver points - behind Abreu, Brad Sweet, Brent Marks, and Justin Peck - and bumped up all of his stats including 12 top-five finishes and 33 top-10 results on the national level. His first official High Limit victory at Lernerville Speedway came in his 84th attempt, and then it only took him two weeks to add a second score at Path Valley Speedway Park.
“I think it was a little bit of both me learning as a driver and our team stepping up, too,” he said on their leveling up. “We fine-tuned our program on the setup and really made our entire package better. That first year our motors were alright, but not good enough to compete at the top level, whereas now I think we have some of the best motors in the pit area. We have an all-around better base program now.”
One aspect of the 88 program that differs from the rest of the national teams is Thorson’s ingenuity to build a coil-over car. Trading out torsion bars, his father-in-law and National Sprint Car Hall of Famer, Stevie Smith, was a large part in the transition that has paid off.
“Stevie was a big reason for it,” Thorson said on his move to coils. “I’m just different, too, right. When we struggled here and there I never really thought it was the car or the bars specifically, we just needed to find the right package for us. Once we dyno’ed some bars and saw where they were at with some inconsistencies, that was kind of our final decision on building a coil car. Stevie had his back in the day and I did it with my Midgets, so it made sense. I joke that I don’t know that Stevie really wanted me to do it, because it’s a lot more work for him.”
With that first one officially knocked out of the way, and his confidence now at an all-time high, it’s simply about stacking more wins in 2026 for Thorson and returning crew members Brinton Marvel and T.J. Nichols.
“I just want to win, win, win,” he said of his expectations. “The big thing is now I really know we can do it. It’s not that I never thought we couldn’t win before, but when you finally do it you feel this extreme confidence in yourself and your team. We ran second or third too many times to count before we won, but then once we broke through we got back to victory lane so fast. There’s a lot of tracks that play into my driving style on the schedule and our team morale has never been better.”
Tanner’s 2026 Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing season officially opens with the SugarBee Blackjack Bash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 12-14 during NASCAR weekend. The 65-race tour will criss-cross the country for eight months before concluding with the All-In Championship Weekend at Texas Motor Speedway on October 16-17. Fans can buy pre-sale event tickets, which enters you for a chance to be selected for the DURST Dice Roll, by clicking here.
Earning the ninth ranked membership across the 2024-25 seasons, Rod Gross Motorsports holds the ‘6 card’ worth a guaranteed $175,000 payout in the inaugural season of the High Roller Club. Their finish this year will combine with last year to determine the 2027 card rankings when the value of the top-10 cards jump to a total of $2,925,000 - making every single point extra valuable.
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If you cannot join Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing at the track, you can watch every lap of every race live on FloRacing, the exclusive broadcast partner of High Limit Racing and the streaming provider of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, USAC Racing, the CARS Tour, the Chili Bowl Nationals, the Tulsa Shootout, the Gateway Dirt Nationals, and much more.
Article Credit: Brian Walker
