DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Recap by Race Chaser Online Managing Editor Jacob Seelman — ARCA photo —
Call him “The Fastest Chicken in the South.”
Zaxby’s-sponsored veteran John Wes Townley stayed ahead of two separate crashes and dominated the latter third of Saturday’s season-opening race for the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards, leading the final 31 laps of the Lucas Oil 200 Driven by General Tire to notch his second-career win at Daytona International Speedway.
Townley passed Will Kimmel on lap 50 of the 80-lap event and was never challenged the rest of the way, holding off teenagers William Byron and Kyle Weatherman en route to his second-career ARCA victory in his 47th series start.
“We had it planned out from the beginning,” said Townley, who also won the Daytona ARCA event in 2013, “but very rarely at these racetracks does it ever work out like you planned. Thankfully tonight, it did.”
Polesitter Cole Custer jumped out to the top spot and led a combined 42 of the race’s first 44 laps, but the real highlight of the early stages was lap two, when chaos broke loose in the tri-oval.
A tag to the rear bumper of Cole Powell’s No. 78 Chevrolet from the No. 83 of Derrick Lancaster coming across the start-finish line shot Powell down the track and into his Mason Mitchell Motorsports teammate Gus Dean. From there, the MMM duo careened off the grass and back into traffic — seeing multiple cars destroyed in the aftermath as a quarter of the field was collected between the exit of the tri-oval and the entrance to turn one.
Nine cars in total were involved aside from Lancaster — eight-time Daytona winner Bobby Gerhart; rookie Kevin Thomas Jr.; Terry Jones; Win-Tron Racing teammates Shane Lee and Austin Wayne Self; Jairo Avila; Mark Thompson; Powell and Dean — as a 10 minute red flag period ensued to clean up the chaos and reset the players.
Underneath that red flag, those involved were checked and released from the infield care center — and Gerhart expressed his displeasure for the early incident.
“I’ve not been a real big fan of the format and I think right there shows it,” said the veteran, who ended up crashed out of the event for the second-consecutive year. “[With] the [group qualifying] format the way it is, you’re really not in control of where you’re going to start. Other people can dictate that by just a misalignment of the draft in a random situation … and it can put you in a bad spot.”
“It’s very unfortunate, but what it does is put cars in a position where maybe there could be a little bit of contact, when in other words, if it was a single-car deal it wouldn’t be that way. Today I was just in the wrong place at the right time.”
19-year-old Self quickly exited his destroyed car and sprinted across the track to the infield following the crash, another driver disgusted with his early exit. While he didn’t elaborate on the crash itself upon returning to the garage area, he did offer an explanation for his hasty retreat.
“That was a big mess and I just wanted to get away from it,” Self admitted. “I know that [the safety crews] were doing their job; I’m just ready to get out of here and focus on next week.”
Following cleanup, the field resumed under the green flag and continued to be paced by Custer through the second caution of the day, which came out on lap 18 for a four-car crash in turn two.
The field was attempting to put Mark Thompson a fourth lap down when Thompson got loose on the bottom of turn two and washed up into Lancaster. That caused a compression of real estate, which squeezed Thompson and Lancaster into championship contender Matt Kurzejewski off the exit of the corner, taking all three cars out of the race and passing some front end damage onto the Empire Racing Ford of Dylan Lupton as well as he slowed to avoid the melee.
That caution lasted for eight laps and allowed for a number of cars to hit pit road for their mandatory pit stops and a full tank of fuel before racing resumed on lap 27. Once it did, Custer and Townley put on a show — with Townley running door-to-door with Custer and leading laps 27 and 32, before Custer asserted command and moved to the top spot alone a lap prior to halfway.
The third yellow of the day would fly four laps past the halfway point, as Tom Hessert’s debut with Venturini Motorsports went sour when he blew a right rear tire halfway down the backstretch and spun entering turn three. Hessert would lose a lap under caution but have further problems upon returning to the track — an apparent brake line issue ending his shot at the win.
With the slowdown, Custer and others would take advantage to make their final pit stops — handing the lead to Will Kimmel for a restart with 32 laps remaining.
The younger Kimmel would jet out ahead of the field for a lap after the restart around the 2.5-mile high banks, before Townley stormed up the outside of the track with outside-polesitter Byron. The 2013 Daytona winner assumed the point at lap 50 and watching out his rear-view mirror as a 12-car lead draft began to shape up for the win at Daytona.
While it appeared several times that the outside lane would form up as the leaders worked traffic in the closing stages, a true challenge never made it to the top three.
Townley, Byron and Kyle Weatherman — who rebounded from having to take a provisional after a blown motor on Friday afternoon kept him out of qualifying — kept the challengers at bay and deftly maneuvered slower traffic, finally clearing the field for good with five laps to go and racing single file to the finish.
Townley admitted that he was a little nervous about a challenge from behind after taking the lead with so long to go in the event, but a cool head under pressure carried him on to victory lane.
“I was a little worried to begin with … when I pulled down [to the bottom] there that they (Byron and others) were going to search for [a way by], but it ended up working out,” the Watkinsville, Ga. driver said. “Once I got out [front] there, they couldn’t quite get to me, which was kind of familiar to me because before when I was behind some other guys, I kind of had the same problem. We just kind of played that to our advantage for the rest of the night and here we are celebrating in Daytona again!”
Byron finished second in his Daytona debut with Venturini Motorsports in the No. 55 Liberty University Toyota, and Weatherman — who said following the race that he “expects to run the full ARCA schedule” with Lira Motorsports — rounded out the podium in third driving a Ford.
A third rookie, Indiana’s Chase Briscoe, finished fourth in a Cunningham Motorsports Dodge to give four different manufacturers representation in the top four positions at the checkered flag.
Rounding out the top five was 10-time ARCA champion Frank Kimmel, who got a massive push from Briscoe’s teammate Kevin Thomas Jr. on the last lap and blasted up the outside lane to kick off his “Encore Tour” in fine fashion.
“The guys fought really hard and, of course, [there were] a lot of crashes today that put a lot of people out,” Kimmel said with a big smile after climbing from his car. “We had great pit strategy today. [Crew chief] Kelly [Bires] did a super job. We stayed out on these General tires and they ran perfect the whole race, we never put a tire on it.”
“This is a pretty special day for us. We’re championship contenders and that’s what you gotta do to start out [a championship run] — a top-five. … Thanks to the 22 [KTJ] for the push on the last lap and to John and Ashley Stange for believing in me and letting me do this. What a great day.”
Bo Lemastus, Thomas, Willie Mullins, Gray Gaulding and Custer — who fell back on the outside lane with 10 laps to go and nearly lost the draft — were the balance of the top 10.
The ARCA Racing Series now takes nearly two months off before moving to Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville for race two of the 2016 season, the Nashville ARCA 200, on April 9.
RESULTS: ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards; Lucas Oil 200 Driven by General Tire; Daytona International Speedway; Feb. 13, 2016
- John Wes Townley
- William Byron
- Kyle Weatherman
- Chase Briscoe
- Frank Kimmel
- Bo LeMastus
- Kevin Thomas Jr.
- Willie Mullins
- Gray Gaulding
- Cole Custer
- Sarah Cornett-Ching
- Tyler Audie
- Brett Hudson
- Thomas Praytor
- Bryan Dauzat
- Brandon Lynn
- Ed Pompa
- Will Kimmel
- Josh Williams
- Steve Fox
- Gene Paul
- John Ferrier
- Cory Howard
- Dylan Lupton
- Dale Shearer
- Tim Viens
- Sean Corr
- Tom Hessert
- Matt Kurzejewski
- Dick Doheny
- Derrick Lancaster
- Brad Smith
- Mark Thompson
- Cole Powell
- Gus Dean
- Austin Wayne Self
- Bobby Gerhart
- Shane Lee
- Jairo Avila
- Terry Jones
About the Writer
Jacob Seelman is the Managing Editor of Race Chaser Online and creator of the Motorsports Madness radio show, airing at 7 p.m. Eastern every Monday on the Performance Motorsports Network. Seelman grew up in the sport, watching his grandparents co-own the RaDiUs Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series team in the 1990s.
The 22-year-old is currently studying Broadcast Journalism at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and is also serving as the full-time tour announcer for both the United Sprint Car Series and the Must See Racing Sprint Car Series.
Email Jacob at: speed77radio@gmail.com
Follow on Twitter: @Speed77Radio or @JacobSeelman77
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