[media-credit name=”ARCA Racing Network” align=”alignright” width=”345″]
[/media-credit]While Brennan Poole took the victory, Chris Buescher was happy to come home third after escaping major damage in a final-lap dustup involving Tom Hessert and Larry Barford Jr.
Buescher was happy with the ARCA Racing Series’ first race on the short track after the worries going into the event about it being too narrow for side-by-side racing.
“It’s a pretty wild race track,” Buescher says. “I’m glad we got to come up here. There are a lot of beat-up race cars, but we halfway expected that. We were hoping it wouldn’t be the case, but you’ve got to kind of expect it coming to a place like this. I think we showed there’s a passing groove. We raced two-wide a lot of the race; a lot of people did. I think it was a heck of a show, even from where I was sitting. I had a ball.”
Meanwhile, Frank Kimmel came home with a fourth place finish and is now one of just two drivers with three top-five finishes in six races.
“I really enjoyed it; what a great little race track,” he says. “I knew it was going to be a lot of fun and it was, just good, tight, hard racing. We pitted quite a bit earlier than some of the other ones, and that kind of caught us in the end. We were pretty much out of tires.”
Kimmel was surprised that there were only four cautions throughout the 200 lap race.
“When the track is so slick, the drivers really have to pay attention, you know,” he comments. “Sometimes, when it’s so easy to drive, you get complacent. Here, you had to stay on your toes every single turn and every single lap.”
The next race for the ARCA cars is this Saturday at Pocono Raceway, which will mark the first racing there since the off-season pavement. Buescher expects it to be a good race due to it being smoother.
“I think that was one of the main issues in Turn 1 that was really slowing us down before,” he says. “With the new rules, I think it’ll be interesting to see, but we’re all in the same boat. It’s just a matter of adjusting the quickest.”
The 80-lap, 200-mile race at Pocono will begin at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, with live timing and scoring coverage at ARCARacing.com. SPEED will air same-day delayed coverage of the race at 2:30 p.m.
