Trevor Huddleston Returning Full Time in ARCA West

Trevor Huddleston will once again chase the ARCA Menards Series West championship in 2024, he confirmed to Frontstretch.

He will pilot the No. 50 High Point Racing Ford with Jeff Schrader as his crew chief.

Racecar Factory and High Point Distributing will be the two primary sponsors throughout the season. Additionally, Irwindale Speedway, Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway and All American Speedway will support Huddleston. Trevor’s father Tim Huddleston owns and operates Irwindale and Kern.

“The first year was kind of our testing year,” Trevor Huddleston said. “We took the team over from Bob Bruncati so we were getting our bearings. This year, High Point is taking on everything and really, let’s just say, starting from scratch with the ARCA car. It’s going full swing on it trying to see if we can get ahead of the competition especially here at Phoenix Raceway.”

After only competing part time in 2022, Huddleston ran full time in 2023, his fifth full season in the West. He took over Bruncati’s Sunrise Ford Racing organization after Bruncati retired from team ownership. Huddleston finished third in the standings, his career-best performance. He won the second Irwindale event and also accrued five top fives, eight top 10s and two poles.

The 27-year-old led the third-most laps in the 12-race season with 247, but he wants better finishing positions in 2024 to capture the title.

“Being in the right place at the right time,” he added. “Last year we were close on speed. Obviously, Sean Hingorani had a great year. He was able to put it together a little bit more than us. We had a couple of issues at Madera Speedway and Portland International Raceway where we got wrecked on the last lap of the race. If you take those points and equate them to what we lost there, it would have been a much closer championship battle.

“So we need to be as fast as possible but be able to complete the race where we’re running rather than getting wrecked out at the last minute. So consistency is going to be the key. And having clean races; making sure that the No. 50 comes home where it deserves to rather than what some of our finishes last year showed.”

Huddleston has three career West victories, two at Irwindale and one at Evergreen Speedway. Evergreen will not host the West in 2024. Huddleston expects to take home more trophies this season.

“To be honest with you, I think there’s a lot of places we can go and win,” he continued. “Obviously the schedule suits us running at two of my premier tracks, Irwindale and Kern. We race at each of them twice so, obviously, if we do not perform well there, it will be a disappointment. At this point in my career, I have been fortunate to race at a lot of the places so looking ahead at the schedule I think the No. 50 car will be in contention to win at all of them. I think we might be a step behind on the big tracks but that’s what we have been focused on, trying to change that. The only one that will be questionable is going to Tri-City Raceway. That’s a racetrack that I don’t think a single driver in this series has been to so it is going to be quite a challenge.”

In addition to Huddleston in the No. 50, High Point will run the No. 55 Ford as a second part-time entry. The team fielded it in half of the races in 2023, scoring one top five, a runner-up at Portland with Cole Custer behind the wheel, and three top 10s. Huddleston aims for the No. 55 to be even faster in 2024.

“We’re going to call that one the all-star car,” he said. “We’re going to handpick the people we’re going to put in that one and make sure it’s people we want to go out and win. That car is not going to be in it for the championship, it’s going to be a slugger race to go out and get one job done and that’s to finish first or second if the No. 50 car finishes first.”

Huddleston would not say who will pilot the No. 55 in 2024. Jake Bollman, who earned two top 10s in his three starts in the No. 55, is not returning to HPR.