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.