The 2009 ARCA season kicked off at Daytona in February, it’s now late July and many races have been run. Drivers are in mid-season form and so are their teams. I had my work cut out for me making my 2009 ARCA debut at Berlin Speedway in Marne, MI.
Luckily I had a team on my side who had been running steady race in, and race out all season. Venturinni Motorsports is quite possibly the most well known team in all of ARCA. They take pride in winning races and developing young talent.
Drivers such as Joey Logano, Sean Caisse, and Brian Scott are all part of the Venturinni Motorsports driver development program. They look up to the team for mentoring, advice, and just sharpening up their racing skills whenever possible.
It’s an honor becoming one of the newest members of their team, it instantaneously amps you up. It also gives you a tremendous amount of confidence going into a race cold turkey because you know the team can win, they have twice this year. You know the car is prepared right, you know that you will unload and be close on set-up right away, and you know that everything will be, or is taken care of . So all I need to worry about is racing the car.
During practice the car was great. The track was an odd ball shape, you never really get the pedal to the floor unless you are on new tires, even then the car has to be right on. Running Oxford the weekend before helped a lot. Not only was Oxford my first time on the track all year battling other race cars, but the shape was nearly identical. Very round and technical, Berlin was similar it just had more banking and was a little bit sharper off turn 4. Our practice time put us 4th on the board. We made a few changes in practice to tighten the car up but by the end of the run we came back to almost the identical set-up we showed up with. All and all practice went well.
Qualifying was borderline disastrous. I don’t know if it was from my lack of qualifying over the past year or so, or if I was just so excited because I thought we had a potential pole winning car and I had way over drove it. Either way I sawed on the steering wheel, drove sideways, spun tires, and some how qualified 13th. Based on how tight the field was and how poorly of a lap I had run I figured I would have been 20th. So I guess calling qualifying borderline disastrous is a bit of an overstatement, but running a bad lap like that in a tight field of cars, and in a caution filled short track race is indeed a recipe for disaster because you put yourself in the middle of the pack where all of the action is (crash action, the action that you want to avoid). So I had my work cut out for me.
It was time to race, after a bit of a shower passed over the track and caused about an hour delay in start time. When the green dropped we where fast, I picked off a few cars lap after lap and before I knew it I was in 8th. I continued to gain positions while keeping the car clean and conserving tires. The 20 car and us had the same strategy, pit once and take four tires instead of pitting twice and taking two tires at a time. I think the strategy worked, it got us up to 2nd while the 20 car continued to lead. Our tires started to wear out just before our mid race pit stop and we lost several positions.
Finally a caution came out and we got our four tires, now I had 60 laps to battle my way to the front from the back of the pack. Once the green dropped we did just that. Within 30 laps I found myself sitting in 3rd with 30 to go, I kept digging and digging trying to catch the leaders who had opened up a bit of a gap, but by doing so I used up some tire and Frank Kimmel in the 44 and the 29 car got around me. I was now in 5th which was the best I felt we were going to run. Just after the 44 and 29 got by me the two of them got together which sent Frank in the 44 car spinning off turn 4. I was once again in 4th and it was going to be a green, white, checkered finish. The green came out for the final time but nobody had enough left to make any significant move. We wound up crossing the line 4th which was a solid day for myself, Venturinni Motorsports, and last but not least our Sponsor National Exhaust System Inc.
I want to thank my family, Billy Venturinni with the rest of Venturinni Motorsports, and Tom Baker from National Exhaust for helping my career continue to move forward and get much needed races in, Thanks guys!
