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But it’s in Saturday’s ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards season-opener, the Lucas Oil 200 presented by MAV TV American Real, that Kimmel, the nine-time ARCA champion, expects to shine despite a qualifying lap in 50.755 seconds, an average speed of 177.322 mph.
“This car is a really, really nice piece that my team at ThorSport has put together, and we’re expecting it to race really well Saturday,” Kimmel said. “That’s how we run, and it’s about as fast as we’ve run since we got it off the trailer. That’s about how we expected to run by ourselves, but we think this car will work well in the draft and we’ll find that out in Happy Hour, [Saturday].”
Final practice is scheduled on Saturday from 10 – 10:45 a.m. ET and the 50th annual Lucas Oil 200 is scheduled to go green at 4:30 p.m.
Kimmel, who has an ARCA-second-best 76 career wins, has never won at Daytona. But his career record in 21 starts is impressive, with seven top-five finishes and 13 top-10s, including second-place runs in 2004-2005.
“I get asked all the time what it takes to win at Daytona, but it’s been pretty darned hard for me — it’s the best race track in the world and we just haven’t managed to get the job done, yet,” Kimmel said with a chuckle, after qualifying.
John Wes Townley, a regular competitor in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, won the pole with a lap in 181.313 mph in a Venturini Motorsports Toyota. He’ll start alongside Venezuelan ARCA Series regular Milka Duno.
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| ABOUT THORSPORT RACING
ThorSport Racing, based in a state-of-the-art 100,000-square-foot facility in Sandusky, Ohio, is the longest-tenured active NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team. ThorSport, which has run full season Truck Series schedules annually beginning in 1998, in 2013 will run the No. 88 Menards Toyota Tundra driven by Matt Crafton, the No. 98 Carolina Nut Co./Curb Records Toyota Tundra driven by Johnny Sauter and the No. 13 Mattei Air Compressor Toyota Tundra for Todd Bodine in the Truck Series and the No. 44 Ansell/Menards Toyota Camry driven by Frank Kimmel in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards.
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