On August 8, Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge was held at the M1 Concourse and the stretch of Woodward Avenue adjoining the racing venue property, bringing a day of high performance fun to Pontiac, Michigan. On August 7, Dodge introduced the new Charger Super Bee, which was on display during the event, serving as a centerpiece to a day filled with drag racing, road racing, brand displays, and a massive car show.
2026 marked the eleventh edition of the event, which started back in 2015 and has been held annually, except for 2020, when it was canceled due to Covid-19. Over the years, the event has battled the weather and permit issues, but Roadkill Nights 2026 went off without a hitch, and aside from a few crashes on the track, it was a great event with plenty of fun for everyone. For those who couldn’t make it, here is a look at what you missed.
The Street Racing Program
Since the first Roadkill Nights event back in 2015, drag racing has been the main focus of the event. The first year’s event was held at the Pontiac Silverdome, but since then, nine of the ten years have featured legal street racing on Woodward Avenue. One year, the racing was held on the straightaway of the M1 Concourse road course because the municipality revoked the permit to race on the street at the last second, but for 2026, they were back to racing on the street. The weather was perfect for drag racing, with clear skies and temperatures in the 80s, leading to some fantastic racing.
The Roadkill Nights drag racing program is broken up into two categories – Big Tire and Small Tire. Small Tire is anything rear-wheel-drive with a rear tire that is 275 mm or less while Big Tire is everything with a wider tire and all-wheel-drive/four-wheel-drive vehicle. Also, the quickest Dodge in each of those classes wins $5,000 as well. The Big Tire class winner was an LS-powered Chevy S10 driven by Nathan Slocum while the Small Tire class win went to an LS-powered Mustang driven by Nicholas Diel. The quickest Dodge in Small Tire was a Hellcat-powered classic Dodge Demon driven by Douglas Sherrill while Tom Bailey and his Dodge Durango took home the check for the quickest Big Tire Dodge.
Show-N-Shine
The original Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge back in 2015 was mostly built around two key components – the drag racing program and the Show-N-Shine area. This is essentially a car show without awards and since that first event at the Silverdome, there has been a massive display of modern and classic vehicles from every imaginable segment. While there is a Mopar-heavy presence that should be expected at an event that has been sponsored by Dodge, literally forever, this car show area is open to everything, so there is a mix of cars, trucks and SUVs from foreign and domestic automakers. This year, Dodge organized a special display are specifically for the Charger and Viper, so there were fewer of those vehicles in the main show area, but there overall, there were a ton of awesome vehicles on display.
The Dodge Displays
As you might imagine, Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge is packed full of Dodge-branded displays. This includes apparel booths selling clothing, toys, stickers, keychains and all sorts of other muscle car-themed items. There were also small booths offering free Dodge-themed airbrushed tattoos, Dodge NHRA drag cars on display with driver autograph sessions, Dodge Thrill Rides in the new Charger SixPack Scat Pack and, of course, plenty of new Dodge vehicles for attendees to check out, up close and personal – including the brand new Super Bee.
The Hurricane Grudge Match
The Grudge Match has been a key component of Roadkill Nights since the first event at the Silverdome back in 2015. For 2026, the new Dodge Charger SixPack Scat Pack was the focus vehicle, with eight teams being given one of these 550-horsepower muscle cars and $20,000 to spend how they saw fit. This year’s Grudge Match was an outlaw class, so the teams could do just about anything to the cars, but they had to use the Dodge Charger, they had to use the Hurricane engine and they had to use the factory all-wheel-drive system. Some teams went pretty conservative, removing weight, adding stickier tires and adding a little power while other teams went with built engines, bigger turbochargers, and monster power.
While it might sound crazy for cars that are nearly stock and heavily modified to compete in the same heads-up class, but as the field went through the elimination rounds, the least-powerful made it to the finals where it took on one of the most powerful. Bryan Kiefer was the driver of the mildly modified Dodge Charger and John O’Malley was the driver of the heavily modified SixPack Scat Pack. In this case, having all of that power made the difference, as O’Malley’s Boosted Motorsports Dodge got away from the starting line better and never looked back – winning the 2026 Roadkill Nights Grudge Match.
Click here for a full rundown of the Grudge Match class.
The Ram Trucks Display
When Roadkill Nights began, it focused fully on the Dodge brand, but a few years back, the Ram Trucks brand was added to the festivities as well. Seeing as how the Dodge brand still doesn’t have a Hemi car in showrooms and Ram does, the lineup of Hemi-powered trucks was a welcome sight and proof that there is hope of a new Hemi-powered Dodge muscle car.
In addition to offering everyone a chance to check out the TRX and Rumble Bee lineup, the Ram Trucks area had meet-and-greets with NASCAR drivers, a NASCAR race truck that did stationary burnouts a few times during the day and a Hemi-shaped mechanical bull ride that has become a popular attraction anywhere it appears.
The New Road Racing Program
The big addition for Roadkill Nights 2026 was the new road racing program called the Track Shootout, which used a portion of the M1 Concourse road course. Like the drag racing program, the Track Shootout was open to all makes and models, and it brought out a truly unique spread of cars and trucks that were built to dominate a curvy course. The road racing was not as simple to watch as the drag racing, since the road racing took place over a fairly large area, but unlike the drag racing, spectators could check out these racing vehicles up close between runs.
From compact performance cars and vintage race cars to modern muscle cars and fully-built race trucks, the Track Shootout brought a whole new crowd to Roadkill Nights. The Dodge press release did not state what each of the winners were driving, but 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.
