SST Season 10 opener at Long Beach features new and old faces

The Stadium Super Trucks‘ tenth season of competition is right around the corner, and a grid of twelve drivers will kick it off in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Two are brand new to the series, while eight of the ten returning names raced in 2021.

Jerett Brooks and Robby Gordon arrive in Long Beach as defending race winners. Brooks’ win was the second of his career after last topping the podium at Crandon during the inaugural SST season in 2013. Series proprietor Gordon is the only driver with four wins at Long Beach, previously winning in 2014, 2017, and 2019.

Reigning three-time SST champion Matt Brabham, Max Gordon, Bill Hynes, and Robert Stout are full-time drivers from 2021. Brabham, who has three wins at Long Beach, is not running the full 2022 calendar as he pursues the Indy Lights championship but plans to return on off-weekends. Gordon enters his third year of SST competition and is still seeking his first podium; he finished fifth in both 2021 Long Beach events. Hynes is one of the longest tenured drivers in the series with race experience dating back to 2014, and he seeks to build upon a strong run in last year’s first Long Beach race when he dominated much of the event before being caught by the pack and finishing seventh. Stout, who was third in the standings as a rookie with a win in Nashville, placed third in Long Beach Race #1.

Shaun Richardson is technically also a full-timer, though from the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean in the Australian Boost Mobile Super Trucks. Richardson last raced under American SST sanction in 2016 and 2017, with the latter seeing his lone starts outside Australia when he raced at Watkins Glen. The Queensland native was third in Boost Mobile Super Truck points with four podiums, but the series has been shut down for 2022.

After a two-year hiatus, Gavin Harlien is back in a stadium truck. He was a championship contender in three full seasons from 2017 to 2019 as he won nine races, including Long Beach in 2018 en route to a runner-up points finish. Like Harlien, Davey Hamilton Jr. rejoins the series after last racing in 2018, and he will run the full season in the #14.

Zoey Edenholm enters her third career SST weekend and second at Long Beach. The ex-Formula 4 United States driver finished tenth in the first race of the 2021 Long Beach round before a brake line problem in the second led to a crash.

A pair of newcomers arrive in Long Beach with vastly different backgrounds. In the #32 is Ryan Arciero, a close friend of the Gordon family and SCORE International Trophy Truck race winner who competed in the San Felipe 250 over the weekend. He will hope to turn his luck around as his SF 250 ended with an engine failure despite leading the overall field early on, while his Mint 400 run a few weeks prior saw his trophy truck lose power while leading. Opposite him is YouTube personality Cleetus McFarland, who builds and pilots a multitude of vehicles across many disciplines but does not race on a professional, full-time basis.

The weekend begins on Friday with a practice at 12:40 PM Pacific (local time). Two races will take place, with one on Saturday at 4:30 PM and the next a day later at 3:30 PM.

Entry list