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Caden Kvapil Prevails Over Brother To Win South Carolina 400 At Florence Motor Speedway

by racerx55 November 23, 2025 0 comments

By Matthew Thomerson/TheFourthTurn.com

TIMMONSVILLE, SC – Caden Kvapil prevailed Saturday to win his first South Carolina 400 at Florence Motor Speedway. 

Kvapil, the 18-year-old standout for Jr. Motorsports’ Late Model program has shared much success this season, including big-time victories at North Wilkesboro Speedway and now Florence Motor Speedway. 

After starting seventh, Kvapil quickly made his way inside the top-five and in contention for the lead, being second once the midway break came on Lap 125. From there, the younger Kvapil battled his older brother, Carson, for the lead, taking it for good after a fierce battle with former teammate, Connor Hall and then sailing away in the final 50 laps to secure one of the biggest wins of his young career. 

“We just made the right changes at the break,” said Kvapil. “We were just a little too tight and loosened it up a little bit, and the second half of the race we were pretty much perfect everywhere. We made the perfect adjustments at the break and we were able to kind of just control the race, lost the lead for a little bit but I knew we had a better car than pretty much everyone out here, I was kind of pacing myself saving the rear tires as much as I could, and at the end of the run just kind of drove away with it.” 

 In second was the elder Kvapil, who led the race early on before surrendering it to Connor Jones, but stayed inside the top-five for much of the event, continuing to challenge for the top spot. Despite setbacks and nearly being involved in several crashes and spins, Kvapil challenged late but ultimately came up a bit short of another prestigious Late Model triumph.  

“We just didn’t have a good enough lateral drive off the corner.” Kvapil said. “Just kind of struggled all weekend with it. It was one of those things where we tried to fix it, then we’d be too tight, and then we tried to fix it, and we’d get it too tight, so you never could really fix it, right?

“The first half, we’d burn our stuff up and we barely won the first 125 runs; by barely, I mean the eight car (Kvapil) was ripping, and I think he was two, three tenths faster than when we ended there.” 

Coming home in third was Kade Brown, the only driver entering the race who previously won the South Carolina 400 at Florence. Brown started deep in the field but quickly made his way into the top-10 and shortly after was battling for a spot inside the top-five, but issues before the lap 125 break, put him multiple laps down. After the break, he fought his way back in contention with a very fast car on the long run, getting to third with just laps to spare to complete another successful venture in the South Carolina 400. 

“I think we just needed laps.” said Brown. “We fired off that last 100 really good, but we started off two laps down, so I mean, as soon as we got our laps back, with about 80 to go, we had our work cut out, and we made quick work with everybody, took advantage of everybody on the restarts and came out strong.”  

Additional finishers inside the top-10 included Jared Fryar in fourth, Keelan Harvick fifth, Cody Kelley sixth, Connor Jones seventh, Matt Cox eighth, Aiden King ninth, and Doug Barnes Jr. rounding out the top 10. 

The race featured many incidents leading to several cautions, including a Keelan Harvick spin and other contenders such as Hall and Sam Yarborough getting caught up in incidents resulting in several yellow flag periods. 

The race concludes this season’s Florence Motor Speedway schedule, but the Late Model Stocks will be at Southern National Motorsports Park next weekend for the Thanksgiving Classic, with streaming on Ultra Broadcasting.

Photo Credit: Hunter Thomas/TheFourthTurn.com