John Wes Townley has the pole for Venturini Motorsports and teammate Milka Duno has the spot next to him. Milka leads from the green flag, leading her first lap(s) in the ARCA series.
Caution on lap 14 for Julian Jousse who has been riding around with steam blowing out of the overflow valve for 11 laps. Eventually, predictably, he blew up.
Weirdness on the race off pit road – there was a stop sign up and some cars stopped, but some cars didn’t, so who knows who really won the race off pit road. There were some cars still on the track as the cars were trying to come off of pit road.
We’re back underway on lap 17 of 80. Kyle Busch is in the booth.
Caution is out for a wreck on lap 22 of 80. Darrell Wallace’s 55 car is in the wall. Justin Boston in the 25, Steve Kemp in the 69 and Brett Hudson in the 11 and Drew Charleson in the 3 were all involved. They’re bringing the cars down pit road, because of the debris on the track. Two of the four Venturini cars were involved.
Chris Buescher is running a limited schedule in ARCA. He had ignition issues and had to make an unscheduled pit stop and is now down six laps.
Darrell Wallace is blaming himself. He says “it’s an idiot move on me.” He says he hit the 25, but from above we can see that the cars in front of him were checking up, so it may not have been avoidable.
Milka Duno is very slow on the track. Will Kimmel has a tire shredding on 27 of 80. Caution comes out. Milka Duno was coming onto pit road. Most likely the caution is for the debris of Will Kimmel’s shredded tire.
Justin Boston hit the brakes to keep from hitting the car in front of him, causing Darrell Wallace to run into the back of him, resulting in the wreck.
Milka had a transmission issue and was stuck in third gear, so they have taken it behind the wall to work on it. So far she’s five laps down on lap 37 of 80.
Bobby Gerhardt is leading after the last restart with John West Townley in second.
KyBu is leaving to head to the driver’s meeting with 18 laps remaining.
Chris Buescher is actually in the second position with 15 laps remaining though he’s six laps down. He’s helping out Bobby Gerhardt. Ricky Ehrgott is using T.J. Majors as his spotter – Dale Earnhardt Jr’s spotter. They mentioned the fact that Darrell Wallace was using his own spotter a guy who came through the ranks with him instead of a Sprint Cup spotter like a lot of people may have contributed to his being involved in that wreck.
Phil Parsons is really aggravated by Chris Buescher staying in the second position with 10 laps to go, though he’s six laps down, to help Bobby Gerhardt. Philly wants Chris to get out of the way and let the lead lap cars race it out. He suggests that John Wes Townley could help Bobby Gerhardt instead. Bobby and Chris have agreed to work together. Obviously that’s a better deal for Gerhardt than having John Wes Townley sitting behind him. I understand Philly’s point, but he’s got to let it go since he can’t go out there and move Buescher.
Bobby Gerhardt just went down pit road at speed. Chris Buescher got the move over flag. John Wes Townley got into the back of Bobby Gerhardt and he went streaking down pit road and went straight through. John Wes Townley leads Kyle Larson with 5 laps remaining. Bobby Gerhardt’s car is sputtering. He’s not sure what happened. Bobby was going for win number 9. Bobby is going back to the pits and they have the gas cans out. The 5 is stopped at the inside wall, way off the race track.
John Wes Townley successfully navigated lap traffic to get the win! Kyle Larson finishes second. Frank Kimmel gets fourth.
Congratulations to John Wes Townley and Venturini Motorsports which got its first ARCA win at Daytona. Good race – dicey at the end with the lap traffic two-wide. That put Kyle Larson in a box as far as being able to attempt to take the lead at the end, but they managed to successfully get by the lapped cars without incident.