Hornet driver Anthony Jenson started off racing with a bang. After contact with another car, he totaled his car in his first-ever race in 2023. However, he didn’t give up. Two years later, he won the 2025 WISSOTA national championship.
After destroying the car he built, he borrowed a car to finish his rookie year. He then bought another car for the following season.
“It took me until the end of the 2024 season to figure out what the car wanted to do,” Jenson, of Milaca, Minnesota, said. “It wasn’t as hard as one would think to drive a front-wheel-drive race car, once I had the mindset to learn how my car wanted me to drive into and through the corners. Coming into a turn, it wanted the throttle to let off a bit. Then I needed to burp the throttle midway through the turn before flooring it on exit. After learning how to float through the turn, smoothly entering and exiting the corners, I was able to win.”
Jenson won four races in 2024, giving him momentum into the next season. He started out with practices at his three home tracks — Granite City Motor Park, Ogilvie Raceway and Princeton Speedway. Then he hit the road.
“In the beginning of the season, I decided to do a lot of driving and get as many races in as I possibly could,” Jenson said. “Staying at home wouldn’t get me a championship. I tried a lot of different tracks this season — eight of them. It made for a lot of work both at home in the shop and one the road.”
The battle for the championship came down to the wire with Jeff Rohner and Brady Fosso. Jenson then started a September to remember with a Labor Day win at Madison Speedway in Minnesota. Three feature victories followed at Granite City Motor Park. And then Jenson closed out the month with a win back at Madison.
When the season’s dust settled, Anthony Jenson topped Rohner by just five points, Fosso by 12. Track championships also came at Ogilvie and Princeton. To top it off, Jenson’s wife, Mikayla, is expecting twins. They will join the family that also includes three-year-old Kennedy.
“In a few years, there will be a lot more hands to help in the pits and in the shop,” Jenson said.
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.
