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Anthony Alfredo lands ride with Viking Motorsports for 2026 NASCAR O'Reilly season

JHby: Jonathan Howard21 hours agoJondean25

Next season, Anthony Alfredo has a new home, and it might be his best opportunity in quite some time in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Alfredo is now more or less back in the Richard Childress Racing family.

Viking Motorsports will field two cars in the 2026 season. Parker Retzlaff will be in the flagship No. 99 Chevy. Anthony Alfredo is going to suit up for the new No. 96 team. Viking just announced a new alliance with RCR as well. Jordan Anderson Racing is part of that group, too.

In the last four seasons, Alfredo has raced for Our Motorsports (2022, 2024), BJ McLeod (2023), and Young’s Motorsports (2025). In those seasons, he has carried those teams to finishes of 15th, 20th, 15th, and 24th overall. The deal at Young’s just didn’t work out as well as others in the past.

Alfredo is also the simulator driver for Hendrick Motorsports. He’s a valuable asset, and still only 26 years old. The 96 team will get the best performance out of Alfredo each week, and he is likely going to outperform his equipment at times. That RCR alliance makes this very interesting.

2025 was a difficult season for Anthony Alfredo. His car was not up to standard most weeks. The speed he had helped build at Our Motorsports did not translate to Young’s program. Only a single top-10 all season. But when you look back at the 2024 season, that’s where the potential is for Alfredo.

Matt DiBenedetto spent more or less two years at Viking. He scored top-10s at Talladega, Iowa, and Michigan during that time. Four straight DNFs at one point in the season did not help Matty D and his 2024 season, either.

Anthony Alfredo can help Viking Motorsports

With a duo of Parker Retzlaff and Anthony Alfredo, you can argue that Viking has two drivers full of potential. They can both exceed expectations if they are smart all season long and avoid trouble. Retzlaff, in particular, has an issue with DNFs in his career. If he cuts those in half, his overall points standing would go up.

Retzlaff will get the benefit of working with Anthony Alfredo. He is a young driver who has already been to Cup full-time, lost his ride, and reset his career as a sim driver for Hendrick and a guy small teams go to when they want to improve their program in the O’Reilly Series.

You could argue that Retzlaff might be able to help Alfredo as well. Retzlaff has turned into quite the qualifying driver. He is able to get a ton of speed out of his cars on those qualifying laps. You add a little Retzlaff qualifying speed to Alfredo’s consistency and you might end up with a good program at Viking.

Anthony Alfredo performed very well in a part-time schedule with Richard Childress Racing in 2020. He didn’t get a win, but he racked up top-10s. Now, back in an alliance with RCR, can Alfredo tap into that ECR speed and get the results that Viking is looking for?