What did it take driver Kevin Hartnett and car owner Brad Grammes to win the King of the Can? Resurrecting an old favorite car. The triumph occurred last Saturday at Penn Can Speedway.
“We swung for the fence and hit a home run,” Hartnett, of Towanda, Pennsylvania, said. “That 2020 [Hig Fab] chassis sat under the trees on an old trailer. It was a winning chassis in 2021 and 2022. It also won the Penn Can championship in 2022.”
After winning the title, Grammes and Hartnett bought a new Hig Fab chassis and ran it from 2023 to 2025.
“The changes in the new chassis didn’t react the way I wanted,” said Hartnett. “It didn’t adapt to my driving style. I was inconsistent in the new car. I felt there was not much of a chance for us to win King of the Can, our biggest race of the year.”
They decided to recommission the 2020 Hig Fab car. It couldn’t come at a busier time, as Grammes and his father, Bill, were working long hours to finish building houses before winter hits.
“They cleaned the old chassis up and swapped parts over the past two weeks,” Hartnett said. “I offered to help, but being two-and-a-half hours away limited my time.”
After rebuilding the old car, they put in a fresh engine from RPM in Lehighton, Pennsylvania. Then the team took it to Penn Can Speedway, with no testing.
“When I sat behind the wheel, things just clicked like they did before,” said Hartnett. “For me, the old car drove better than the new one, and I was way more comfortable.”
The night started off well and only got better, with Kevin Hartnett winning the King of the Can.
“We didn’t even have to make a lot of chassis adjustments,” Hartnett said. “In the heat, we went from seventh to third. We tightened it up a big for the feature — we figured the track would dry out.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
