Clouds hover above the track as Kevin Lee and Phil Parsons begin the ARCA broadcast. Tom Hessert won the pole for the race. Austin Theriault will drive a full season for Ken Schrader Motorsports in the ARCA season. Nice. They’re putting covers on the cars as Austin is doing his pre-race interview. Some of the drivers are climbing into the cars. The on-air guys mentioned a few raindrops at the end of Daytona 500 practice, which ended about 30 minutes before the start of the ARCA race.
So far the ARCA kids are rolling smoothly – I spoke too soon as two cars go spinning toward the gas. Looks like they didn’t hit anything on lap 6. Caution is out. Bryan Dauzat, Willie Mullins and Derrick Lancaster were involved. A little bit of contact, but no major damage for any of them. Lancaster’s tire seems to have blown out the right front quarter panel. Still, no catastrophic damage to anyone. Kaz Grala got into the back of Willie Mullins.
Phil says he came to the second ARCA race at Daytona in 1965. Philly is either older than I think or he was there and doesn’t actually remember it or has a really long memory. Checked out his wiki page and Philly is just older than he looks – which is a lovely thing to say about any adult.
Restarting on lap 11. Matt Tifft is in the race in a Joe Gibbs Racing car. The car will be in the series full-time in 2017, though will have a different driver.
James Finch is sponsoring the Dalton Sargent car for this race. He also sponsored him in the Snowball Derby. Nice to know James hasn’t given up on motorsports altogether after his years of woe with Kurt Busch in Sprint Cup.
Noah Gragson started out toward the front, but has come into the pits and is getting a lot of work done on the car steadily losing laps.
The race is scheduled for 80 laps, but the skies are threatening and they’re anticipating a rain shortened event.
Caution is out for debris on lap 21.
Tom Hessert’s spotter was just called Frankie Kimmel by the pit reporter. Hmmm. I didn’t pay attention to the race lineup, so I don’t know how we’re Kimmel’d. Just checked the ARCA site and it appears we’re un-Kimmel’d. Bummer. I’m a Frank fan, but now that I think about it I’m wondering if I didn’t hear something about him retiring. I miss seeing more of the ARCA season races and having the opportunity to keep up with the series. I’m going to keep an eye on the site this year to try to keep up when they’re not on tv – and try to catch the races. Last season I often seemed to be out of the house and away from tv when they were running.
Restart on lap 25 of 80.
Mason Mitchell has stepped out of the car to crew chief for his team car driven by Quin Houff.
The rule in the ARCA series is that you have to pit before 10 laps to go.
Lelani Munter hasn’t been in a race car for two years. Phil says she’s just not had much luck though she’s run a good race when she’s been there, but something happens at the end of the race to ruin her finish. She’s running around 16th now in her Vegan Powered car. She went vegan 5 years ago and has the guys at Venturini Motorsports trying it. Phil said he tried some of the food and it was pretty good.
ARCA will run 20 races this season.
So far this has been a clean race overall.
Under caution coming back from commercial break. Kevin says Bryan Dauzat took a spin. Philly believes the right rear tire went down sending him into a spin.
Quin Houff got blocked into his stall leading to his having to stop and back up in order to exit and causing him to lose the lead. The race has had two leaders so far – Tom Hessert, until his lost the lead on the previous pit stop, and Quin Houff who lost it on this pit stop.
Terry Jones will lead the field to green restarting on lap 49. Big wreck on lap 50. The 50 and 27 are both on fire.
The 2, 6, 16, 32, 27, 37, 66, 60, 80, and many more involved in this wreck. Red flag is out. Justin Fontaine got into the back of Mark Thompson sending him around to start the whole pile-up.
Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead is Lelani’s brother-in-law. He’s married to her sister Natascha. Nice video of Bob adding a Dead sticker to her car.
Will Kimmel and his wife became parents recently. Congrats to the Kimmels. Kevin says that’s one of the reasons he’s not in the race today.
Six weeks until the next race, in Nashville, in early April.
There are 28 laps to go as they’re rolling around under caution. Terry Jones will lead the field to green.
Jim Tretow says its drizzling and that’s likely extending this caution.
Looks like we’ll be restarting on lap 55 of 80 as the lights go out on the pace car.
Yuck, fisheye lens shot!!!
Cars spin out into the infield with fifteen to go including Lelani Muner. Bo LeMastus has damage as does Andy Seuss, Thomas Praytor, Quin Houff. Phil says at least seven cars involved in that incident. Bo LeMastus hit Lelani in the rear, turning her into the outside line. Michael Self got a piece of that.
We’re getting the one to go signal with 10 to go. So we’ll be restarting on lap 71.
Terry Jones is very very close on fuel as he leads the field to the green.
Autin Theriault takes over the lead from Terry Jones.
Caution with five to go. The Justin Fontaine car is upside down after riding on the drivers side door for a while. Bobby Gerhardt and the seven are tied up on the wall.
The red flag is out.
Codie Rohrbaugh and Bobby Gerhardt are out of their cars and on their way to the infield care center.
Justin is moving around in the car as the car is returned right-side-up.
Medical personnel is talking to Justin and checking him out before allowing him to climb out of the car.
Kaz Grala got into the 8 car to start this incident. Derek Lancaster also got into the wall. The 5 was just driven away on a wrecker.
The rain seems to be coming down harder. Jim Tretow says the ground is holding so much heat that the drizzle was evaporating as it hit. Might not be the case with this rain. Jim says the rain has stopped again.
I will be glad when this trend with women on tv, like Caitlyn Vinci, putting all of their hair in the front of their shoulders passes. It looks so stupid. If you need more hair buy extensions, or get a really good haircut that allows hair in front and back of your shoulders.
Caitlyn’s piece with Lelani is one of her best. She’s dressed appropriately – professionally – and asking quality questions. Nice piece!
There’s been damage to the SAFER barrier so the race is called. Austin Theriault is announced as the winner. Congrats to Ann and Ken Scrader on their team’s first win of the 2017 season.