DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – One of the unheralded stories during the ARCA Racing Series season opener at Daytona Int’l Speedway on Feb. 10 was that of part-time racer Willie Mullins, who persevered and overachieved during the Lucas Oil 200 to bring home a career-best runner-up finish.

Mullins’ No. 3 Crow Wing Recycling/Bugsy’s Auto Ford survived a crash-filled ending to the Speedweeks kickoff – which featured two attempts at a one-lap overtime finish – to come home with a feel-good moment for one of ARCA’s underdog, lower-budget teams.

“We’ve all been so excited all week to have done what we did at Daytona and to go forward with great success for a little team,” said Mullins. “It’s still hard to believe, man.”

Knowing that his car would have speed after qualifying ninth, Mullins elected to drop to the rear of the field to start the race, knowing that carnage would eventually ensue.

“We decided to start in the back,” Mullins admitted. “We were just going to wait out all the wrecks and that’s basically what we did.”

The strategy eventually paid off. Mullins worked through a melee on the backstretch during the originally-scheduled final lap, coming down to the first of two red flag stoppages in 11th after the smoke cleared.

But even at that point, Mullins felt he wasn’t where he needed to be in order to contend.

“During the first red flag, when Bret Holmes ended up on his side, we were sitting back in about 11th and thinking that we had waited too late to make our move,” Mullins admitted. “We thought we missed the window to move forward and try to set ourselves up in a good position. We did all our counting and tried to make sure our fuel mileage was right … and then I got a huge shove from behind on that first restart.”

The first overtime attempt saw a huge crash in turn three after Sheldon Creed, Chase Purdy, Sean Coor and Travis Braden all crashed in turn three while racing for the win.

Behind them, Mullins had picked up five positions on the restart, slipping through to an unlikely runner-up position behind Michael Self – who inherited the lead as a result of the incident.

“Once I got in front of Tommy Praytor going down the backstretch, then all of a sudden, the four leaders all piled into the fence going down into turn three … and I’m driving underneath them thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I just got through there,’” recalled Mullins. “We came out the other side running second and it was take a deep breath because it’s time to go.”

But when the green flag returned for good, Mullins found himself in the worst possible position at Daytona – up front with no drafting help – as he was surrounded by three Venturini Motorsports Toyotas for the race-ending 2.5-mile dash.

“On that final restart, there was nothing I could do because I had no help,” Mullins lamented. “We were basically on Venturini Island, if you want to call it that, because it was two Venturini cars behind us and Michael (Self) beside us. They obviously weren’t going to push me past Michael, so I had to wait for Sheldon Creed to get to my back bumper to give me a push back to even where we started at that restart.”

“We were fortunate to get second … I wanted one spot more, but like I said – Natalie wasn’t going to push me up to Michael – and right she shouldn’t have. She was trying to protect the win for the team and I understand that. It’s still a great finish for us and a heck of a memory.”

Mullins’ result was his best finish in 12 career ARCA Racing Series starts, coming in his third appearance at the World Center of Racing.

But despite the shot in the arm that the runner-up effort provided, he added that it won’t change his team’s approach and commitment to only racing a part-time schedule with the series.

“We’re going to continue with our part-time plans; everything we do here with my business does pay for (our racing), inevitably. We don’t want to run ourselves broke, but we want to make sure that every race we do show up to, we’re competitive and we show well,” said Mullins. “That’s why we pick a handful of events to go to each year, so we know when we unload that we’re going to have a shot.”

“We’re weighing all our options; our next race might be Talladega, but we’re still working to figure out that next move. I can tell you this, wherever our next race is, I’ll be pumped up to unload there.”

For the 38-year-old Virginia native, Saturday’s race wasn’t just another number on the career line, nor was it a disappointment that he didn’t ultimately leave with the trophy.

Mullins viewed the moment as much bigger than all of that.

“This is the biggest racing achievement of my life,” he said. “Other than getting married in November, this is definitely about as high up on the list of moments as it gets. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to duplicate it, but we’ll always be able to tell the story and they’ll never be able to take it away from us.”

“Whenever you go to Daytona and do well, it’s a memory that you end up talking about for a long, long time. We’re really proud of this.”