DAYTONA BEACH, FL - ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards officials allowed drafting for the first time Saturday afternoon in open testing at Daytona International Speedway, and Venturini Motorsports filled the top four spots on the speed chart.
Alex Bowman - a winner in each of his only two ARCA starts, at Madison, Wis. and Kansas - drove Venturini's No. 25a Chevrolet to the best lap at 47.787 seconds (188.336 mph), topping teammates John Stancill, Brennan Poole, and Ryan Reed, and Tony Marks Racing's Jared Marks.
Milka Duno finished sixth overall for the day. Duno had driven Sheltra Motorsports' No. 63 Ford to the best time in the morning session - under single-car conditions - at 48.383 seconds (186.016 mph). She improved to 48.166 seconds (186.854 mph) in the draft.
Nelson Canache was seventh, and Drew Charlson, Matt Lofton, and Steve Blackburn filled out the top 10.
Seven-time and defending Daytona winner Bobby Gerhart ended Saturday 22nd, ahead of 2011 Daytona runner-up and ARCA Rookie of the Year Chris Buescher (30th) and nine-time ARCA champion Frank Kimmel (33rd). Kimmel's work Saturday represented his first on-track ARCA action for ThorSport Racing.
2012 will be the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards' 60th Anniversary Season, featuring 20 races at 18 tracks. The season begins with the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday, February 18. The event will air live on SPEED.
The complete 2012 event schedule is available at ARCARacing.com.
The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards has crowned an ARCA national champion each year since its inaugural season in 1953, and has toured over 200 race tracks in 28 states since its inception. The series has tested the abilities of drivers and race teams over the most diverse schedule of stock car racing events in the world, visiting tracks ranging from 0.4 mile to 2.66 miles in length, on both paved and dirt surfaces as well as a left- and right-turn road course in its most recent season. This year, the series will visit Alabama's Mobile International Speedway and Minnesota's Elko Speedway for the first time; ARCA's first visit to Minnesota will give ARCA a race in a 29th state.
Founded by John Marcum in 1953 in Toledo, Ohio, the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) is recognized among the leading sanctioning bodies in the country. Closing in on completing its sixth decade after hundreds of thousands of miles of racing, ARCA administers over 100 race events each season in two professional touring series and local weekly events.
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