After having spent years in the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Xfinity, and the Camping World Truck Series it hit me on Sunday afternoon how truly unique the ARCA Series is.
On Sunday in Winchester Josh Reeves was ready to race but his over the wall crew didn’t show up. Our UNOH crew volunteered and went over the wall for him as well as pitting the #9 of Thomas “Moose” Praytor.
That may seem strange to most but the previous week in Madison, Josh’s day ended early and he (Reeves carrying for the 9) climbed out of his car and was carrying tires for the Moose. We were the ones short that week.
While I was watching our team pitting the 42 I started thinking of all the swaps, trades, exchanges and borrows that occurred at or leading up to Winchester.
Let’s start with the 27 of AJ Fike, they broke a transmission in the last practice and didn’t have a spare. We loaned them one we had gotten from Venturini Motorsports in the off season.
Speaking of Venturini, Big Bill delivered a nice set of used tires we used for the race. Big Bill wants everyone to think he’s a big wheeler dealer but in fact he has one of the softest hearts on the tour. There are lot of us low budget teams that rely on Venturini Motorsport for parts, pieces and you name it. Venturini gave Thomas one of his first ARCA start opportunities 5 years ago that gave me a chance to talk to Wayne Hixson about Daytona the next year in the spotters stand.
That conversation led to Thomas driving for Hixson for 2 years and really gave us the ability to get where we are today. Wayne’s 2 entries this weekend were both cars Thomas had driven while at Hixson’s. We had trailer troubles on the way up and Wayne was one of the first to offer a hand. Talking about Wayne leads me to Wayne Peterson.
Our trailer broke down just south of Nashville in Peterson’s back yard, he has us hooked up with a tire guy to get reloaded for Iowa. Two weeks ago in Michigan we got a sweet deal on tires because the manager of the store was friends with Peterson’s driver, Con Nicolopoulus.
Chase Storch ran our 23 car at Winchester, nick name Bubba. We got Bubba from Corey Dueser who made his first start in the ARCA Series this past weekend for Mark Rette. Come to find out Bubba was originally a Kimmel car.
This year’s Fathers Day was spent in Madison, last year’s was spent with the Kimmels in Indiana. If you want a good time have all the Kimmels in one spot and wait for the ice cream. This past weekend Will Kimmel made a rare start for Cunningham Motorsports.
Most folks don’t know that Cunningham supplied our team with our first set of owner’s points to get us in the race at Daytona 2 years ago. This wasn’t the first time we’ve worked together either, as part of the Outdoor Channel we sponsored a Cunningham car way back in 2000 and 2001.
Speaking of way back, not many drivers go back to 1988 but Brad Smith does. We ran our first second car this year at Daytona, it was an honor to have Brad behind the wheel. What a comeback story and last week he cracked the top 10 in points.
Speaking of 10’s no one had worse luck at the track last week than the 10 of Dick Doheny driving for Andy Hillenburg. For the last 2 weeks I think Dick has spent more time working on our motors than he has working on his own. Of course you can’t talk about Fast Track without mentioning David “Niccapano” King. He is always picking up and delivering for our race team, just this weekend he brought a set of hero cards to the track for Thomas. Of course you have to feed him. The PR part of this deal is nonstop, just ask 2 time winner Josh Williams.
Josh uses our Live At Track Tweeting service and with this season he has gotten over 3 million views while chasing a Championship. In the middle of all that his race team bailed us out with a motor delivered overnight to Michigan by Alabama’s Mike Harmon.
Alabama has made a real charge in the Series this year. We are helping Brett Holmes keep his number going while he prepares for his rookie season next year. Then there is start up Jent Motorsports with Dustin Knowles another Alabamian in the top 10.
Just about every team in the garage has made a delivery to us at the race track none bigger than Donnie Richardson with Ken Schraders team. Donnie brought us a car from the body hanger in North Carolina and took another back with him.
The last couple of weeks Mike Basham has been our personal chauffer. Having the big rig so far from home we’ve needed transportation to and from the track. Mike’s truck has been the perfect place for our luggage. The big plus he doesn’t take money, thank goodness his Dad isn’t with him or it would have been costly. Thinking about Darrell (Basham) hurry up and get well, we miss you and Sandy at the track.
Talking about Dad’s is the perfect intro to the final paragraph and the only team that hasn’t been mentioned in this story, Mason Mitchell Motorsports. I just want to again thank Russ Mitchell for being in the ARCA Series because as long as Russ is in the Series, I’m the second worst Dad.