It’s been back-to-back successful days for Venturini Motorsports. Jesse Love won the ARCA Menards Series race at Watkins Glen International on Friday (Aug. 18) and Sean Hingorani won the ARCA Menards Series West at Evergreen Speedway on Saturday.
Hingorani made the lone pass for the lead in the NAPA Auto Parts ARCA 150, passing polesitter Tyler Reif for the lead before the 150-lap race reached its halfway point. He never looked back, driving his No. 15 Toyota to his fourth win of the 2023 season.
Unofficially, Hingorani became the new series points leader, snatching it from Landen Lewis who slid back to fourth place after running second shortly after the halfway break. Hingorani has now won half of the races of the 2023 season and holds a precarious one-point advantage.
In his second race with Central Coast Racing, Reif wound up second, his first top-five result since the second race of the season. He recently announced he will finish the season with the organization. Team co-owner Todd Souza wound up the first driver one lap down in 10th place.
After debuting to a third-place finish in the series’ previous race at Shasta Speedway, Kole Raz again finished third.
Lewis and Eric Nascimento rounded out the top five in fourth and fifth, respectively.
The eighth race of the 2023 season saw only two caution flags fly all night at the 0.625-mile short track.
The first caution was for the scheduled halfway break which allowed teams five minutes to make adjustments on the racecars.
Only a few laps after the race resumed, calamity struck defending Evergreen victor Tanner Reif when he pounded his No. 16 into the wall for a last-place (15th) DNF.
As a result of only two caution flags, only nine of the 15 drivers finished on the lead lap.
Trevor Huddleston, who won at Evergreen in 2019, finished sixth followed by Kyle Keller in seventh. Jacob Smith drove the No. 41 Lowden-Jackson Motorsports Ford to eighth with Bradley Erickson in ninth. Bizarrely, Erickson wrecked his No. 88 after crossing the finish line, though no replay determined what caused his misfortune.
Now the West series has over a month-long break until its next event. VMS though will look to go three-for-three in ARCA competition this weekend. The national series will visit the Illinois State Fairgrounds on Sunday. The defending winner at that racetrack? Love.
On Saturday night in Monroe, Wash. though, the night belonged to Hingorani, who scored his fourth career West win and took the points lead, joining Love as the two VMS drivers to lead the points in their respective full-time series.
ARCA West Results at Evergreen
The West field next heads to All American Speedway. That racetrack will host the NAPA Auto Care 150 on Saturday, Sept. 30 at 10:45 p.m. ET with coverage provided by FloRacing.
About the author
Mark Kristl joined Frontstretch at the beginning of the 2019 NASCAR season. He is the site's ARCA Menards Series editor. Kristl is also an Eagle Scout and a proud University of Dayton alum.
A daily email update (Monday through Friday) providing racing news, commentary, features, and information from Frontstretch.com
We hate spam. Your email address will not be sold or shared with anyone else.