A day after graduating from high school, Ty Dillon won the Messina Wildlife Animal Stopper 150 at Chicagoland Speedway for the fifth win of his ARCA career that is only eight starts old.
“That was our game plan, to stay patient all day,” Dillon said, as according to the ARCA Racing Network. “We came in that second or third stop, and we were really loose. Something was wrong with our left rear tire; it never gained any pressure or anything. I told (the crew) we were going to have to come in and pit, because we can’t win the race like this. Once we got fresh tires and got everything back to where it was supposed to, we came back through the field. By then, (Hackenbracht) was so far out front and it was his race.
“Unfortunately, that happened to him, but the caution helped us and put us where we needed to be. We had a really fast car.”
For crew chief Scott Naset, it was an early birthday present as he turns 40 on Tuesday, though no surprise as he won at Chicagoland with Kevin Harvick in 2001 and 2002.
“It’s Flash’s [Naset’s] birthday this week, so I’m just really happy for these guys,” Dillon said.
The race looked to be Chad Hackenbracht’s as he had a nine-second lead on Dillon, though he blew a tire with 15 laps to go ending his shot at the end.
“I told the guys probably 10 laps into us leading the race, ‘Thanks for this car. It’s a rocket ship,'” Hackenbracht, who would be scored 20th, said. “It really was. We had a nine-second lead when the tire blew, and I had no warning. I may have run over something. It sounded like it was in the center of the car so I didn’t think about it at all. I felt like we had it in the bag, almost.”
For the family owned team of CGH Motorsports, it could have been the story of the year as they were the quickest car in practice and looked to be a strong contender for the day.
Chris Buescher finished second, followed by two-time World of Outlaws Late Model Series champion Josh Richards, who was making his seventh start in the series with Venturini Motorsports.
“We struggled for raw speed all weekend, but Wayne Carroll – the crew chief – and all our guys worked so hard on this thing,” McCumbee said. “They weren’t the least bit concerned that we weren’t going to be good on a long run; we were. Our ModSpace Ford was good. I felt we were a race-winning contender, especially on the first green flag run. We adjusted on it a bit…but we just needed laps. Those short runs were not what our car wanted, but I’ll tell you what: two top-fives in a row. That’s big for our Andy Belmont Racing team.”
Chad McCumbee, meanwhile, kept up his consistency, as he has so far this season, with a fourth-place finish.
“We knew the track was going to change when the lights came on,” Richards said. “We were really free early. I had to run the top to just keep up as much as possible. We made some changes there and got definitely a lot better, but that’s the first time I’ve ever run the top at an asphalt track, so I got a lot of experience and got to feel the air a little bit. The Venturini (Motorsports) guys did an awesome job.”
Last week’s winner Andrew Ranger rounded out the top five, followed by Tom Hessert, Frank Kimmel, Grant Enfinger, Brent Brevak and Maryeve Dufault. Stefan Rzesnoiecky was 11th in his ARCA debut.
Next up for the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards is the first of two trips to Pocono Raceway for the running of the Pocono ARCA 200, round seven of 19 on the 2011 schedule.
