Riley Herbst didn’t have much luck in last season’s ARCA race at Talladega Superspeedway after wrecking late in the race, but he turned things around this year, finishing second in Friday’s race.
However, if you think second is a good day for a driver, you would be wrong. They are always left wanting more and Herbst certainly could have won the race if given the right opportunity.
“Ah man, I don’t know,” Herbst told FOX Sports 1. “Second just sucks really really bad! But I can’t thank everyone at Monster Energy enough, Joe Gibbs Racing for providing me a really fast Toyota Camry.”
“I thought we had a run there at the end, but Todd’s (Gilliland) car was really fast. You know, all we could come home with was second.”
Despite the race being unusual for ARCA, Herbst is pleased with the result.
“Yeah you know, I was kind of happy with that too,” Herbst continued in his FOX Sports 1 interview. “This race is 76 laps long and you got to get to the end of the race, so I didn’t want everyone to wreck at the beginning and drag out 80 laps of caution or whatever. So I was happy we got to race for a little bit, but it sucks single file for the fans. All in all, second is a good day for the 18 in the points.”
For Brandon Lynn and Venturini Motorsports, they were looking for better after finishing seventh in last year’s race, especially considering the fact that the Venturinis’ have not won at Talladega.
It looked liked the feat could have got crossed off the list early on, as Lynn and the No. 20 team sat on the pole which gave Venturini Motorsports their fourth consecutive pole of the year.
Lynn ran up front for most of the day but never made too much noise. He had a shot at the end, however, but could not make anything happen.
After all was said and done, the Venturini crew still found themselves winless but came home third improving on last year’s finish.
“Yeah, I think we had a great car,” Lynn said to FOX Sports 1. “We were hoping to get a run there at the end, but it didn’t happen. You know, we ended up where we were at. We’ll take it. I can’t thank these Venturini guys enough for putting together such a great car this weekend. Hopefully, we can get some stuff together to run more races for the rest of the year.”
Despite finishing third, Lynn describes how tough it was to make a pass in the end.
“Yeah, it’s tough,” Lynn said. “You just got to feel it out and hopefully you keep the car close to you, and not let him get too far back. You want to get that run together on the cars in front of you. So, we did what we could and it just didn’t pan out in the end.”
