14 to hit Long Beach for 2023 SST season opener

Fourteen trucks will kick off the 2023 Stadium Super Trucks season at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, including a quartet of newcomers among the cast of returning faces.

Bruce Binnquist, David Bernstein, Trey Hernquist, and Joshua Thomas are making their series débuts. Binnquist, Bernstein, and Hernquist hail from desert racing backgrounds, with Binnquist currently leading the Unlimited Off-Road Racing Triple Crown UTV Championship while Hernquist competes in SCORE International; the two recently raced together in the Mint 400 Limited Race in March. Bernstein competes in sand drag racing in Southern California.

Thomas is the son of Brett Thomas, who ran SST in 2015. The younger Thomas will use the very nice #69, his father’s number when he competed in the trucks.

While not his first rodeo, Myles Cheek will run his second SST race after last competing at Long Beach in 2017.

Ryan Beat, another returnee from the world of short course, will race at Long Beach for the first time; Beat ran at Nashville in 2022 after three years away from the series. He intends to run at least two SST rounds in 2023, including Nashville in August, with additional starts depending on funding.

Gavin Harlien‘s title defence will begin in the #1 truck, which is reserved for the reigning champion and last officially used by Paul Morris in 2018 (Matt Brabham retained #83 during his three years as defending champion, but included a tiny 1 on his numberplate next to his main number).

Brabham, a three-time SST champion, returns to SST after spending 2022 in what is now Indy NXT and finishing third in the championship. No longer competing in the series, Brabham has mostly turned his attention towards the Trans-Am Series, where he is currently second in the TA standings behind his team-mate Chris Dyson. He will drive Continental Tire’s flagship truck, with which he won Race #1 at Nashville last year.

Bill Hynes is back for his tenth season in the series, joining Robby Gordon in drivers with a decade of SST experience. Gordon ran a scaled-back schedule in 2022 to focus on SPEED UTV, which included being absent when the newcomers were testing trucks at SST headquarters in North Carolina; his son Max Gordon, who finished runner-up in the 2022 championship, oversaw the tests.

Robert Stout, who has finished third in points over the past two years, is back for another season. He will have a different truck from usual for 2023 after parting ways with longtime sponsor Lucas Oil.

SCORE veterans Cole Potts and Christian Sourapas are also expected to take part, though have yet to confirm their plans as of article publications. Potts last raced in 2019, winning three times and placing fourth in points, while Sourapas made his SST début at Long Beach in 2021. Potts is coming off a retirement at the SCORE opener in San Felipe with a drivetrain failure, while Sourapas has mostly stepped away from desert racing save for occasional returns such as finishing second in substitute duty for his father Steve at the Mint 400.

Practice and qualifying will take place on Friday, 14 April, at 12:15 PM Pacific Time. Race #1 is scheduled for Saturday at 4:30 PM, while Race #2 is on Sunday at 3:30 PM after the NTT IndyCar Series race.

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