ARCA Ansell ActivArmr 150 Preview - Speedway Digest

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards heads to the Chicagoland Speedway for the 14th straight year this weekend.

ARCA is coming off of two short races at Elko Speedway and Winchester Speedway. Grant Enfinger won Elko in dominating fashion and Brandon Jones used a last-lap pass on Mason Mitchell to score the Winchester victory.

Mitchell’s finish at Winchester was his fourth runner-up in the last six races. He ran last year’s race at Chicagoland, but it was a start-and-park effort for Kimmel Racing.

His No. 98 car is a Ford, the same manufacturer that won last year’s race with Corey LaJoie and the Roulo Brothers. Ryan Blaney ran with Cunningham Motorsports and dominated the race before running out of fuel with less than 10 laps to go.

Win-Tron Racing driver Frank Kimmel is the only driver to compete in all 13 ARCA races at Chicagoland. He has one win there in 2003.

In the 13 races, there have been 13 different winners. Chevrolet and Dodge are tied with the most wins there with four.

Chicagoland is a home game for a few teams, especially Venturini Motorsports. The team has two wins at the 1.5 mile track with Scott Lagasse, Jr. in 2008 and Kevin Swindell in 2012. Swindell is also the last driver to lead every lap in an ARCA race. Justin Boston came up short of the victory in last year’s race when the fuel tank ran dry coming to the white flag.

On the subject of fuel mileage, Josh Williams nearly stole the show last year by conserving enough fuel and being passed by LaJoie late and settling for a runner-up finish.

Points leader Grant Enfinger hasn’t run on the 1.5 mile track since 2011 and has a runner-up finish there in 2009 when he was edged out by Justin Lofton at the line.

The race has been won from the pole five times and the worst starting position for a Chicagoland was 34th by Ed Berrier in the inaugural race in 2001. Berrier’s record will be safe as 30 cars are entered for this weekend’s race

Four Chicagoland winners have gone on to win the ARCA championship: Frank Kimmel (2003), Justin Lofton (2009), Patrick Sheltra (2010) and Ty Dillon (2011).

ARCA has run in conjunction with the NASCAR Nationwide Series the last three years. Before that, the series ran with IndyCar from 2001 to 2010.

The Ansell ActivArmr 150 will air live 6 p.m. ET on Saturday on FOX Sports 2 (FS2). It will be one of two ARCA races that air on FS2 with the other being the season finale at Kansas Speedway in October.

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Kyle Magda

Currently, I’m a journalism student in college who enjoys the sport of racing. I've been following NASCAR in-depth since 2001.Along with my love of racing, I’m also into baseball, football (college & pro), and college basketball.I also have my own website, The Life of Kyle, where I write about various topics.And to get my feet wet into radio, I have my own show called Overdrive. I started it with my friend. Since we can’t record together most of the time, we have our own versions. I cover NASCAR and ARCA, and he takes Formula One and IndyCar.Not forgetting to mention, I have my own YouTube channel as well.As for race tracks, I’ve gone to races at Pocono, Watkins Glen, Daytona, Dover, Loudon and a few local short tracks as well. I hope to cross the Indianapolis 500 off my list in the future. I hope to become a man of many hats.