Feeling refreshed after their most recent ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards race at Salem (Ind.) Speedway last month, Gus Dean (@gusdean) and his Win-Tron Racing return to Lucas Oil Raceway for Saturday night’s rescheduled Shore Lunch 200.
With the Sept. 7 race postponed by inclement weather, Dean and his Jamie Jones-led team headed to Salem hoping to rebound from a poor finish at the DuQuoin (Ill.) State Fairgrounds – but more importantly give them the momentum they needed to close out his sophomore season on a high note.
Fighting their worst qualifying effort of the season (14th), Dean in his No. 32 Baker Distributing | GREE Cooling Products Chevrolet continued to press forward throughout the race and found themselves contending for their second victory of the season. And even though Dean couldn’t swipe the lead away on a late-race restart, the Bluffton, S.C. native did deliver his fifth top-five of 2018 and a positive outlook towards Saturday night’s rescheduled race.
“It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been in a car,” laughed Dean. “Seriously, Salem was a good shot in the arm for us after DuQuoin. It’s hard to believe that just two races remain this season, but we’re focused on making the best of them and keeping our No. 32 GREE Cooling Products | Baker Distributing Chevrolet in the hunt for another win.”
Dean, 24, returns to Lucas Oil hoping to improve on his sixth-place result last July. Circling back to the track more than a year later, the Bluffton, S.C. native believes his No. 32 GREE Cooling Products | Baker Distributing Chevrolet can contend for their second ARCA victory of the season.
“We had a really good GREE Racing car at Indianapolis last year, just ran out of laps,” added Dean. “We qualified mid-pack and it literally took us the entire race to get back to the front. I know Jamie has a game plan for this weekend and we’ll try to stick with it and see where we end up.”
Out of the championship hunt, Dean says his goal is to finish the season inside the top-five in the standings, but the South Carolinian says execution will have to be perfect.
“It’s still within our reach, but we’ll see,” added Dean. “We want fifth. We deserve it. The competition has been strong this season, we just haven’t had a whole lot of luck this season. Some races we had the speed and looked like we would be in contention for a good finish and something would go wrong and we had nothing to show for it.
“I need to do a better job making sure I put ourselves in a position to capitalize, whether it’s restarts or just being at the right place at the right time. If we can do that, we shouldn’t have any problem of delivering two top-five finishes to end the year.”
Team owner Kevin Cywinski says the team is making the most of the final two races of the year.
“Salem was a good boost for us,” he said. “We’re optimistic to go to Lucas Oil Raceway this weekend and have a good finish. “It’s going to be a stacked field and we’ll have a car that Gus should be capable of being a contender, but these ARCA races are tough to win, and Gus knows what he’s got to do to be better.
“As Gus has said, we need to be consistent at the end of the season when it counts most.”
In 45 career ARCA Racing Series starts, Dean captured his first career victory in his second ever start at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway after starting second in Apr. 2016, while earning his second win at Elko Speedway in July 2018. Overall, Dean has two poles (Pocono July 2018; Springfield August 2018), two wins, 13 top-five and 26 top-10 finishes.
The Shore Lunch 200 (200 laps | 137 miles) is the 19th of 20 races on the 2018 ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards schedule. Practice begins Sat., Oct. 6 with an hour and a half session planned from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. General Tire pole qualifying is set for 4:15 p.m. The race is set to take the green flag that night shortly after 7:00 p.m. The event will be streamed live on ARCARacing.com with a to-be-announced air date on MAVTV. ARCARacing.com will also offer live timing and scoring throughout the day’s activities. All times are local (ET).
For more on Gus Dean, please visit his all new website at GusDean.com or like him on Facebook. Dean tweets too. Follow him on Twitter @GusDean.
For additional information on GREE Racing, please like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter @GREE_Racing.
Learn more at Win-TronRacing.com, Facebook or on Twitter @WinTronRacing.
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