Spec E9X Wins the 2026 ST5 National Championship

Five years ago, this E90 won the ST5 National Championship at Daytona. This year, we brought the same car to Sebring and did it again.

A lot has happened to the car in between. More importantly, a Spec E9X class has grown around it. What started with this one car has become a group of E9Xs racing together throughout Florida and the Southeast. Because Spec E9X isn't yet a NASA national class, five of those cars came to Sebring to compete for the ST5 National Championship. Our goal was to give our Spec E9X the best chance it could have under the ST5 rules while showing what the platform and the class could do on a national stage.

The First Spec E9X

This was the first E90 we built for Spec E9X. There weren’t any other cars in the class yet, so we handed it out to friends and other racers interested in the series. It was raced around Florida and the Southeast, including Road Atlanta, giving people a chance to experience the platform while we worked on growing the class. In 2021, I raced the car at Daytona and won the ST5 National Championship.

Most of its life since then has been spent racing in Spec E9X trim in Florida and the Southeast. The one exception was 2023, when we converted it for Gridlife GLTC. That took us outside our normal region and onto GLTC’s predominantly Midwest schedule. We added a wing and splitter, made more power, and ran the car considerably heavier, with minimum weights north of 3,100 pounds at some events.

After that one season, the GLTC configuration came off, and the car went back to Spec E9X trim. I originally bought it with around 180,000 miles, and it now has roughly 187,000. Nearly all of those additional 7,000 miles have been accumulated on track with the original engine and drivetrain.

A Different Approach 

By 2026, our Florida Spec E9X group had become increasingly competitive. Scott McKay and Curtis Buxton both had well-developed cars, and we’d spent plenty of regional weekends racing each other and learning where each car was strong and where it wasn’t.

Going into Nationals, my car made roughly 10 horsepower less than some other Spec E9X cars. Normally that isn't something we'd address by changing the basic formula of the class. The point of Spec E9X is to race the cars against each other under a common ruleset. But because Nationals required us to compete within ST5, we had to look at the car through ST5's power-to-weight formula for that weekend.

ST5 allows different combinations of power, weight, tires, and modifications to reach the required performance level. Rather than chase horsepower before Sebring, I decided to work with what I already had. If the engine was making less power, I could declare that power and take advantage of a lower minimum competition weight. That made weight reduction our ST5 strategy for Nationals—not a new direction for the Spec E9X ruleset.

When the first Spec E9X rules came out in 2023, the minimum weight was 2,975 pounds. Over the last few years, we’ve learned a lot about where weight can realistically come out of an E90. 

Optimizing for ST5

We run Spec E9X within the ST5 framework, so this wasn’t a conversion. It was an optimization. The underlying car was still the Spec E9X we'd been racing; we were simply taking advantage of the options ST5 gave us for Nationals.

One example was the E90 M3 front control arms. They’re legal in ST5, but they carry a 0.7 modifier. We didn’t want to take that modifier with our goal of reducing weight, so we went back to stock E90 control arms with adjustable bushings and still got the camber we needed.

With the rules sorted, we started taking weight out. The larger 330 rear brakes came off for 328 brakes. We swapped the CSF radiator for a lightweight Behr radiator. Then it became a lot of little things: more gutting in the headlights, doors, hood and trunk, removing the wiper mechanism and mirrors, simplifying the latches, installing AeroCatch hood pins, running without the cool suit and replacing the muffler with a simple downturn.

A Different Wheel Setup

One of the freedoms ST5 gave us at Nationals was wheel width. Spec E9X runs a 17x9 wheel, but for ST5 I went to a 17x10. That was something I picked up from our time racing in Gridlife GLTC. The wider wheel supports the tire better, and combined with a lighter car, the goal was to make life easier on the tire over a full race.

I had tested the 17x10 setup at several events before Nationals, so this wasn’t an experiment at Sebring. I’d also run the Toyos throughout 2025 and already knew the pressures the car liked. We arrived with a wheel and tire package we understood.

Friday — P1

We knew pretty quickly that the package was good. My AIM wasn’t working during warmup, so I had no idea what lap time I’d run. When I came back in, I found out we were quickest.

In the first qualifying session, I ran a 2:28.082 for P1. It felt good, but I was still surprised by the number. There was another qualifying session that afternoon, but with the higher temperatures, we didn’t think there was much chance of going faster. Rather than put another heat cycle on the tires, we parked it and kept the time we had.

That put me on pole for Saturday’s qualifying race.

Saturday — 0.158 Second

I got a good start and held the lead early, but Scott stayed close and got a good draft down the back straight. He had more horsepower, and going into Turn 17 on the first lap he was able to motor by me.

I spent the next five or six laps chasing him and looking for a way back around. We were close, but I couldn’t quite get there before a red flag stopped the race. When we eventually went back to green, a full-course caution compressed the field again and set up a two-lap shootout to the finish.

Scott and I have raced together enough that we trust each other, so we could race close without giving much away. We went at it for those final two laps, but I couldn’t get back around him.

Scott beat me by 0.158 second.

Then we hit the scales. I was roughly 30 pounds over where I wanted to be, and that pushed me to start pulling even more weight from the car.

The dashboard came out. The AIM and camera came out. The hood shocks came off. We went through the car piece by piece, asking what we really needed for one more race.

We’d also had enough tire-to-tire contact during the qualifying race that I wanted to make sure nothing had moved, so we put strings around the car in the paddock and checked the alignment.

By Sunday morning, the car was roughly 20 pounds lighter than the one that had qualified on Friday.

Sunday — Championship Race

Scott started on pole and I lined up P2. I got a great start and took the lead before Turn 1. Curtis moved into second behind me with Scott third, but Curtis spun on lap two and fell all the way to the back of the field. From there, he put together a hard charge through the field and fought his way back to P4 by the finish.

I put my head down and tried to build a gap. About 15 minutes into the race, we started catching traffic. At Sebring, traffic can erase several seconds quickly, so getting through it cleanly became a big part of the race.

Behind me, Besik Menabde was working his way forward and eventually passed Scott and moved into second. With about 15 minutes to go, I asked my crew chief, Christy, to start giving me the gap to P2. I was still pushing, but having that number let me manage the race. Instead of taking unnecessary risks, I focused on maintaining the advantage and getting through traffic cleanly.

There was one close call. A Spec E30 ahead of me was dripping fuel going into Turn 1, and I ended up going off track. I gathered the car back up, got going again and kept pushing.

From there, I just needed to bring it home.

We won the 2026 ST5 National Championship by 10.193 seconds.

Why It Worked

After the Championship race, the car weighed roughly 2,825 pounds, with a minimum competition weight of 2,796. 

The lighter car worked with the 17x10 wheel package to help us keep the tires and pressures consistent through the race. More importantly, there wasn’t one magic modification that won it. Some of the changes actually looked like steps backward. M3 control arms came off and stock arms went back on. The CSF radiator was replaced with a lightweight Behr. We installed smaller rear brakes and removed equipment that had previously been added to the car.

Individually, some of those changes might look like downgrades. Together, they made our Spec E9X better suited to the ST5 rules we were racing under.

The tires stayed happy, the car was light, and I didn’t make mistakes when it mattered. The hard part wasn't one lap or one pass. It was all the preparation that put us in a position to win the race.

More Than One Car

Five Spec E9X cars started in ST5 at Sebring. We put three in the top four, and Logan Dewar took the TTT National Championship in Time Trials. It was a good reminder that this group has depth, not just one fast car.

Five years ago, I won ST5 at Daytona in the first Spec E9X, when the class was just getting started. The goal since then has always been to grow Spec E9X into a NASA national class.

Five years later, we're still racing within ST5 at Nationals. Hopefully Sebring showed that Spec E9X is ready for the next step.

Thank you to my crew, Rising Edge, Öhlins, Rowe, Epic and Condor for the support.