The first Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge back in 2015 introduced the world to the thrilling automotive festival and since then, there have been continued efforts to improve and expand the event. The legal street racing program was introduced in 2016 and that has been a key component of the event every year but one, when a permit issue forced everyone to race on the straightaway of the M1 Concourse road course. For 2026, the drag racing program was back on the stretch of Woodward Avenue that borders the M1 Concourse and, for the first time, there was road racing within M1 during Roadkill Nights.
In addition to the drag racing and road racing programs, all of the key components of past Roadkill Nights events were in place as well. This includes the Grudge Match program, the show-n-shine area, the Dodge Thrill Rides, new and concept vehicle displays from Dodge, new and concept vehicles from Ram, Dodge NHRA vehicles, Ram NASCAR vehicles, apparel for sale from Dodge and Ram, celebrity meet-and-greets and a spread of food and beverages for purchase.
“Roadkill Nights puts Dodge exactly where we belong: on Woodward, surrounded by passionate performance fans and street-legal drag racing,” said Matt McAlear, Dodge CEO. “This year, we introduced the 600-horsepower 2027 Dodge Charger Super Bee Launch Edition, the quickest, fastest and most powerful Super Bee ever, with 200 horsepower per liter, on-demand rear-wheel-drive capability and a 0-60 mph time of 3.6 seconds. We also celebrated 60 years of Charger and gave fans a full day of Dodge performance, from thrill rides in the new Charger to the first-ever track shootout experience. The energy was incredible, and Roadkill Nights proves nobody connects with muscle-car fans like Dodge.”
Here is a look at the competition results from Roadkill Nights 2026.
Legal Street Racing on Woodward Avenue
As has been the case for years, the drag racing program is broken into three groups – Big Tire, Small Tire and the Grudge Match. Small Tire is for two-wheel-drive vehicles running tires that are no wider than 275 while Big Tire is for everyone running bigger tires or all-wheel-drive. We will go into more detail on this year’s Grudge Match later in this piece.
The Big Tire and Small Tire classes begin with open runs and from those, the eight quickest vehicles in each class make up the competition bracket. There is also an individual award for the quickest Dodge in each of those two classes. Unfortunately, as has often been the case in recent years, the quickest Dodge entries in Big Tire and Small Tire were outside of the quickest eight of each class, but Tom Bailey was the quickest Big Tire Dodge while Douglas Sherrill and his Hellcat-powered Dodge Demon took home the title for the quickest Small Tire Dodge.
As for the Big Tire and Small Tire winners, an LS-powered Chevy S10 driven by Nathan Slocum won Big Tire and an LS-powered Mustang driven by Nicholas Diel won Small Tire.
Dodge Charger Grudge Match
Each year, there is some sort of Grudge Match held during Roadkill Nights and for 2026, the new Dodge Charger SixPack Scat Pack was the focus of the eight-team competition. It was an outlaw class with only four basic rules – the teams have to keep the Dodge Charger body and chassis, the teams have to use the Hurricane engine, the teams have to use the 8-speed automatic and the teams have to use the all-wheel-drive system. Also, this year’s Grudge Match only starts at Roadkill Nights – it will end later this year at the Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas when the top four in points go head-to-head-to-head-to-head.
The competitors for this year’s Grudge Match include Bryan Kiefer, Demi Bagby, Titan Motorsports, Rob Dahm, Dave “Heavy D” Sparks, Evan Shanks, John O’Malley and Jonathan Rimbo. They were each given a new Charger Scat Pack and $20,000 to spend however they wanted. Some obviously spent more than $20k while others likely had some pocket money left to enjoy when the build was complete, but in the end, it was a heavily-modified Charger going against a car that was nearly stock.
The final round of the Grudge Match saw Bryan Kiefer taking on John O’Malley, who also competed in last year’s Grudge Match in a Hurricane-powered Dodge Viper. O’Malley’s engine had upgraded internals to handle the added boost of a monster turbo setup, leading to roughly a thousand horsepower. Meanwhile, Kiefer’s car had an in-house-made cold air intake and a piggyback tuner, but this 600-horsepower Charger made it to the finals to battle one of the most powerful cars in the field.
Kiefer’s luck ran out on that last run, as O’Malley got off of the line very well and with far more power, there was no chance of running the Boosted Motorsports Dodge Charger down from behind.
New Road Racing Program
Finally, even though Roadkill Nights has been held at the M1 Concourse road racing facility more often than not over the past 11 years, there has never been a road racing competition – until 2026. The new road racing program, called the Track Shootout, used a small portion of the facility’s large road course track, making a short, technical course that drew an impressive field of racers for the first year. In addition to a wide variety of different makes and models of vehicles, there were also quite a few purpose-built truck engineered to dominate the twisty track.
The Dodge press release did not state what each of the winners were driving, but we know that Jon Roed won the Forced Induction class, Joshua Douglas won the Naturally Aspirated 6-cylinder class and Brian Finch won the Naturally Aspirated 8-cylinder+ class.
