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  • Alex Bowman wins ARCA Menards Pole Award for Mobile International Speedway

    Alex Bowman wins ARCA Menards Pole Award for Mobile International Speedway

    [media-credit name=”ARCA Racing Network” align=”alignleft” width=”345″][/media-credit]Last year, Alex Bowman impressed everybody as he won in both his ARCA Racing Series starts. So far this year, he has a 30th place finish at Daytona International Speedway. Bowman is now looking to turn things around at Mobile International Speedway.

    He is off to a good start as he led practice and won the Menards Pole Award presented by Ansell. He drove a qualifying lap of 17.547 seconds to put his No. 22 Dodge for Cunniongham Motorsports on the pole for the first time.

    “We have a great eBay Motors and St. Jude’s Dodge,” the 18-year-old from Tucson, Ariz said after qualifying. “I can’t thank all the guys at Cunningham Motorsports enough. I’ve always been terrible at qualifying, quite honestly, and for us to get a pole definitely shows how good the car is. We’ll definitely have a good race car tomorrow. Look for us up front.”

    Bowman credits the success to a test earlier in the year.

    “We came here and tested a few weeks ago, and it’s a pretty neat place,” he said. “It’s like Madison, and similar to Motor Mile (in Virginia).”

    16-year-old Chase Elliott will start his first ARCA race on the front row along side Bowman, driving the No. 9 Aaron’s Dream Machine/Hendrickcars.com Chevrolet. Elliott, the son of NASCAR Champion Bill Elliott, has turned heads so far with his success. Last year in the K&N Pro East Series, he scored three top-fives and six top 10s in 12 starts. In 2010, he scored 13 victories, 29 top-five finishes, 39 top-10s and six pole awards in 42 Late Model starts. One of the notable accomplishments was winning the Miller Lite Series at Mobile International Speedway.

    Starting third will be another rookie as Eric Jones will become the first 15-year-old to start an ARCA Racing Series race, driving for Venturini Motorsports.

    ARCA recently changed the age limit from 16-year-olds to 15-year-old for drives to compete on tracks one mile in length or shorter. To compete on tracks bigger than one mile, drivers need to be 18 years of age or order.

    “We started off on new tires and worked really hard on the whole package, the drivability of the car,” the Bryon, Michigan native said after practice. “It was fast, just not quite the feel we wanted. We worked through the whole practice and finally got what I wanted.

    Jones comes into the ARCA Series with a lot of success, as he won the 2011 JEGS/CRA All-Stars Tour Championship, winning at Rockford Speedway and Owosso. He also won the prestigious Governor’s Cup, leading every lap in the super late model race in Florida.

    Brian Keselowski and Ryan Reed rounded out the top five, followed by Chad Hackenbracht, Brennan Poole, Matt Lofton, Cale Gale and Grant Enfinger. Nine-time ARCA Champion Frank Kimmel starts 11th with Southern short track star Bubba Pollard in 12th.

    The 200-lap, 100-mile Mobile ARCA 200 will begin at 2 p.m. Central tomorrow, with live timing and scoring and live audio coverage available at ARCARacing.com. WNTM Fox News Radio 710 AM (Mobile) and WTDR Thunder 92.7 FM (Talladega) will produce and air the broadcast for ARCARacing.com, and also air the race to a network of Alabama radio stations. The race is scheduled as the second of 20 this season.

  • ARCA Driver Tom Hessert to Ken Schrader Racing in 2011

    ARCA Driver Tom Hessert to Ken Schrader Racing in 2011

    ARCA driver Tom Hessert announced that he would be running the full 2011 ARCA Racing Series schedule with Ken Schrader Racing after finishing third in points in 2010.

    Hessert, who drove the No. 77 Cunningham Motorsports Dodge to one win, 10 top-fives, and 15 top-10 finishes in 2010, informed Cunningham Motorsports owner Kerry Scherer last week that he will drive in 2011 for Ken Schrader Racing.

    Hessert had a solid year as he was in the thick of one of the tightest points battles in recent years with Patrick Sheltra and Craig Goess.

    [media-credit name=”tomhessert.com” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]”It was an awesome year,” Hessert told the ARCA Racing Network last month. “Obviously, I’ll say that this was the best season in my career to this point. I’m a little disappointed to not win after we came from such a difference after the first eight races – 220 points down – to lead the championship for a couple of hours (laughing), at least, after Salem. We got our first win and had a bunch of top-10s and top-fives, so I’m pretty pleased.”

    The first win is a moment that many refer to as the highlight of the year, as he held off Ty Dillon to win the Prairie Meadows 200 at Iowa Speedway.

    “It’s incredible,” he told me of that first win. “It’s my first win in a quite awhile and to win it in that fashion and leading all those laps at Iowa Speedway in front of a great crowd and with the Camping World Truck Series teams being on hand and all those people in the garage area and on Speed, it couldn’t have been a better day.”

    Hessert got into racing through his father.

    “My dad raced in sports car for a long time in the late 80s/90s and I grew up going to the races,” he told me. “I went to my first race when I was two weeks old and fell in love with it then.”

    His father, among others, has now given him the advice needed to get to where he is.

    “My dad’s been a mentor of mine all throughout my career, as he’s obviously a race car driver,” he said. “In our series, it’s Frank Kimmel, which everyone has been saying. Kenny Schrader’s also been a great friend, a great mentor the last year-and-a-half, and there’s Andy Hillenburg.”

    Hessert found himself with Cunningham Motorsports this season after a discussion near the end of last year.

    “Last year, I drove the first half of the season for Andy Belmont Racing and then the second half of the year for RAB,” he said. “Then near the end of the year, one of the guys from Cunningham Motorsports called me and I went down to Georgia and met with him and it was a very attractive offer. They ran really well last year and their affiliation with some of the big teams in NASCAR was very appealing and so far, so good. I couldn’t be happier.”

    Hessert had some experience running some Camping World Truck Series races near the end of the year of 2010 and has expressed interest in moving into the NASCAR ranks. Therefore this move to Ken Schrader Racing puts him in position to do with that with Schrader’s program and connections.

    Cunningham Motorsports may be in trouble as Dakoda Armstrong, Hessert’s teammate in 2010, has not yet informed Cunningham Motorsports of his plans for 2011, according to a team press release. 

    Cunningham Motorsports is actively looking for sponsored drivers for 2011, and continues to prepare for the January 11-13 ARCA Racing Series open test at Daytona International Speedway.