Viking Motorsports Ends Impressive Darlington Performance Near Valhalla

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Viking Motorsports owner Don Sackett was proud when the sun went down at Darlington Raceway on Saturday, March 21.

But a few moments earlier, he was a nervous wreck. Both of his cars were running near the front at the end of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at the Track Too Tough to Tame.

“I was scared to death,” Sackett told Frontstretch. “I was like, when is the wreck coming? When is the flat tire coming?”

After a 147-lap brawl for the field, Sackett’s Viking Motorsports cars driven by Parker Retzlaff and Anthony Alfredo had finished the race both in the top 12.

The thing is, the result could’ve been even better. For Retzlaff, the eighth-place finish was his second top-10 result of the season. However, the No. 99 Chevrolet was running in the top five for the almost the entire race before being shuffled back a few spots from a slow pit stop.

On the other hand, Retzlaff finished in the points in both stages, with a fifth in stage one and sixth in stage two. All of which happened after the No. 99 qualified fifth. It was no fluke performance from the Viking car.

“Yeah, I mean to get stage points in both stages at a place like this in a lower budget team and a team that’s in year 2 and trying to build, it’s a very good day,” Retzlaff told Frontstretch. “This place is very hard. It’s hard to get everything correct, and I think we did a lot correct.”

The only thing the team may not have gotten correctly was the final pit stop. In the final caution flag period, Retzlaff had to restart ninth after being near the top five. The No. 99 could only gain one more spot in the final 15 laps.

“It’s just very aggressive with 15 to go,” Retzlaff said. “Everyone is pushing for everything they got, and I felt like that was my actually my weakness was fire off. So I was like, ‘This is not going to not be what I wanted,’ and it actually worked out better than I was kind of expecting.”

Regarding the Viking team’s status, it’s not lost on Retzlaff of what an impressive performance the team truly had on Saturday. In only six starts in 2026, the 22-year-old has already ended two of them with top 10 results. One of those was a second at EchoPark Speedway, beginning a trend of what may be his best personal season yet.

And with a young sophomore team, no less.

“It’s more we’re racing against teams that have been now put together for 50 years, and we’re only in year two trying to build a whole new team of people who haven’t worked together and get all the resources and stuff correctly of how it should be done,” Retzlaff said. “So I think we’re doing a very good job.”

For teammate Alfredo, the race was very different.

Alfredo had no top-five qualifying result to hang his hat on Saturday afternoon. The No. 96 started 21st, rather. The 26-year-old O’Reilly veteran knew he was going to have to claw his way into through the field.

And claw, he did. By the end of the first stage on lap 45, Alfredo had already cracked the top 10 and finished ninth for stage points. In stage two, he only improved to finish seventh.

“It started with qualifying,” Alfredo told Frontstretch. “We had to go out early, and that definitely hurt our starting position. But we drove from 21st to ninth that first run, and we were the fastest car on the track at the end of it. Next run, we lost some spots on pit road and drove back up to seventh, so still a net gain.”

For the final stage, however, the result was the same as his teammate. Alfredo had a slower pit stop that cost him track position

“I think if that last one goes green to the end, we’re in a really good position to finish in the top five or better,” Alfredo said. “But all in all, it’s a great building day for us.”

Also like Retzlaff, Alfredo had nothing but positivity for his new team that had top-10 speed and earned stage points in both segments on Saturday.

Not bad for the brand-new Viking car.

“You know, the No. 99 team, that deal was already done,” Alfredo said. “They ran a season last year. This No. 96 group didn’t come together until December, so it was super late in the season to get this group of guys together, get the equipment and everything we needed to go out there and compete. But we’ve been building it from the ground up, and we’re going to keep getting better.”

Indeed, for a team that’s so young, Viking Motorsports showed on Saturday it is getting better as time goes on. For team owner Sackett, he couldn’t be prouder.

“I mean, really, they drove well, and they have a great crew around them and a great team back at the shop,” Sackett said. “The alliance with [Richard Childress Racing] helps a lot too, right? So, yeah, I was really proud of them, because this is a really tough track. Two young drivers that don’t spend a lot of time here, and they did really well, so I’m really proud of them.

“I’m proud of the whole team, anyway.”