Category: ARCA

FONTANA: Cory Mott scores second victory of the season in ARCA

FONTANA, C.A. — Cory Mott leads 19 laps en route to his 2nd win of the ARCA season.

Sunday night kicked off the 12th round of the Grand National Tour (ARCA) for the Crown Jewel Racing community. 13 drivers set the grid for a 75 lap event held at the slick and hot Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.

Newcomer Aiden Schramm was able to put himself on pole with a 42.435 holding off Haden Higginbotham’s 42.491. Schramm would end up leading the most laps in the race with a total of 51, but would eventually fall back to 4th by the end of the race.

Chaos started the race early on as on lap 3 Bob Baker and Jonathan Leger came into contact out of turn 4 and would have to use their fast repairs. Just 2 laps later Bill Martin would end up mowing down the outside wall and have to use his fast repair as well.

The race would stay green however until lap 9 where Gordon Fraley would attempt to make a slide job for the lead out of turn 4. He would end up getting turned off the nose of Schramm and crashed down pit road. The next caution would be on lap 14 just off a restart, where Cory Mott would end up sliding too far up in turn 1 and come into contact with Tyler Krawczyk who would also collect Ryan Taft in the incident. Both Krawczyk and Taft would end up over 50 laps down and would not be able to finish the race. After that only two more caution flags flew, one for incident and one for the halfway competition yellow.

At the break, current points leader heading into the race Thomas Villano would end up taking the lead over Schramm, but would end up dropping back in the field after pit stops. The field would go back green with Schramm in front with Haden Higginbotham back on his outside.

An underdog story of the night came from Bill Martin as he would slowly move his way up the field. Martin would start 8th and by lap 46 he found himself up to 3rd, he would hold that position to the end of the race and secure his first top 5 in the Crown Jewel community.

I’m still trying to learn – This is a good confidence booster for me and hopefully I can improve throughout the rest of the year.

Bill Martin, #75 High Rock Vodka Chevrolet

Haden Higginbotham would finish 2nd and secure his 8th top 5 of the season, and close back in to the top 3 in points. The Missile Racing driver was looking to tie the season high of 3 wins held by Thomas Villano and other Missile Racing driver Ryan Persinger. Persinger, however was absent once again from the field and would continue to drop in standings, now sitting currently in 8th.

Well I ran well today, could’ve gave Cory more of a run for his money but it would really help if my teammate Ryan would do a race every once in a while. I’ll have to yell at him a different date about that.

Haden Higginbotham, #10 Missile Racing Chevrolet

Top Tier would pick up another win with Cory Mott as he would dominate the closing laps of the race. Both of the other podium drivers Higginbotham and Martin would go on to say in post race interviews that he was able to save his tires the best out of everyone. With a track temperature of 117 at the beginning of the race, drivers were sure to be slipping and sliding everywhere on the racing surface.

I used the first half of the race to learn – turns out these cars are similar to the cup cars (Next Gen) where you just wrap the bottom for the first 20 laps, and slowly drift up the track. I could tell Haden was really pushing behind me but once I got around Aiden, it would pretty much be just hitting my marks.

Cory Mott, #73 Top Tier Racing Chevrolet

Next week will be an off week for the Grand National Tour so drivers will be well relaxed for their next outing at Phoenix Raceway on the 21st of July. Thomas Villano was able to put 4 more points between himself and current 2nd place Jim Mott. Tonight’s action will kick off at 8:25 PM ET with the Sportsman Truck Series at Chicagoland Speedway.

NASHVILLE: Porter sweeps, Villano picks up Kern Raceway

Cody Porter picks up two wins this week, one in the Sportsman Truck Series and one in the rain-delayed Circuit Cup Series race in Nashville. Thomas Villano finds his third win of the ARCA season at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway.

Crown Jewel started off the weekend out in Bakersfield, California. A small crowd showed up following the real-life Cup Series Nashville race – seven drivers took to the high banks of Kern County Raceway. Robert Fraley took his first career pole with a qualifying time of 20.286s and lead the field to green. Robert would also bring out the first caution of the race, spinning from the front of the field and collecting Cory Mott. At this point, the race became the Thomas Villano show. Thomas would take the lead and lead 128 laps before claiming his third victory of the season. Villano currently leads the standings by 21 points over Jim Mott heading into Auto Club this upcoming week.

Monday night saw the Sportsman Truck Series returning to action for the Split #2 finale at Nashville Super Speedway. Zack Saunders took the pole with a qualifying time of 30.079s and lead the field to green for 150 laps around the 1.33-mile oval. Saunders would only lead 17 laps however, along with his teammate Mike Burnett – who would go on to win both stages in the race. In the closing laps however, Cody Porter would make his move to the front of the field and lead the field to the checkered flag for his first career win within the Crown Jewel Community.

READ MORE: USHERING IN A NEW ERA: HOW THE MCRL BECAME CROWN JEWEL

As this was the Split #2 finale, three more drivers locked themselves into the Sportsman Truck Series playoffs – John Connor, Cory Mott, and Henry Kallhoff. These three drivers will join Mike Burnett, Zack Saunders, and Nishil Condoor in the playoffs later this season. Split #3 will provide the last 6 playoff spots – three coming from the Split #3 standings, and three coming from the full-season wild card standings. For the current playoff situation, make sure to visit the Sportsman Truck Series Playoff page for a full breakdown.

Disaster struck on Wednesday night. At approximately 7:30 PM EST, iRacing experienced an outage that created a ripple effect, tanking server performance. Circuit Cup Series officials decided to delay the race – a “weather delay” was put on the stream, and server performance was monitored. One final attempt to create the league session occurred at 10:00 PM EST, and it was successful – the race was on.

I set up for the long run – I worked with Oskar Jensen to get the setup dialed in for the long run. Firing off, we were not good – really had to drive our balls off. But towards the end we were mowing them down left and right!

Cody Porter, #04 Money Shift Racing Ford Mustang Darkhorse

After a two-hour and eighteen-minute delay, Thomas Wolfe led the field to green after qualifying with a time of 30.379s. Two quick cautions struck as cars tangled in the middle and back of the field. A 30-lap run ensued where Thomas Wolfe would find himself out front when a caution struck at lap 41 – ending the stage. Stage two saw much of the same dominance from Wolfe, where he would lead every single lap in the stage and win. Backroad Bandit teammate Kristopher Burnham would put up a fight in stage three, leading 51 laps before falling back to Wolfe. However, from the middle of the pack came a surging Cody Porter, taking the lead with just nine laps left in the race. Cody Porter would go on to win the race and sweep the week at Nashville Super Speedway.