“I would say what surprised me the most is the lack of control within the group,” Garrett Mitchell, aka Cleetus McFarland, said during the ARCA Menards Series broadcast of the 2025 season opener at Daytona International Speedway. “The amount of swerving going on was shocking. Look at this shot [the TV shot] right here. These guys are probably the best, you know, left and I’m not saying I was perfect by any means.
“Listen, I’m looking out my window at this person next to me. I’m like, ‘Brother, keep your wheel straight. What the hell are you doing?’ Like we’re swerving left and right … and I think that was ultimately the demise of my race was people just not keeping their steering wheel straight.”
Mitchell, making his series debut, is spot on with his assessment.
The view of the season opener now might be masked by Mitchell’s hilarious interviews, Brenden “Butterbean” Queen’s feel-good victory and great ratings – more on those later – but there was also a bevy of worthy criticisms, too. Read the commentariat on the ARCA Menards Series Facebook page from the race weekend if you want to see more.
Firstly, before the green flag flew on Saturday [Feb. 15], series officials made a controversial decision. For the second straight year, there were DNQs for the season opener. A strong entry list is always good, but inclement weather forced series officials to cancel the intended practice, thereby canceling qualifying and using that on-track time to hold practice.
As a result, five drivers missed the race. Among those were Steve Lewis Jr., who has a pair of top-15 finishes in the past two Daytona races. Furthermore, Chase Pinsonneault failed to make his series debut driving the No. 15 Toyota for Venturini Motorsports. Yes, Venturini, which had won four of the past five Daytona races entering 2025, saw its No. 15 miss the show due to a lack of owner points. Lastly, Robert Martin failed to make the show despite driving an older VMS Toyota.
There is no guarantee those drivers would have made the field, but they were never able to turn a lap on track. It is a byproduct of a condensed Speedweek with a tighter timetable for on-track activities. Add in Mother Nature, which canceled ARCA and NASCAR Xfinity Series qualifying, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series practice, and delayed the Daytona 500, and there is seemingly no room on the schedule for delays.
Could practice times from the ARCA preseason test, held in January, be used to set qualifying groups if practice is canceled?
On one hand, it is not a requirement to attend the test so it penalizes those who did not attend. On the other hand, those who attended the test are vested in a successful Daytona race. Reward them for it.
The race itself continued a worrisome trend. Seven yellow flags flew, 13 drivers finished on the lead lap, and 22 of the 40 drivers DNF.
That marks four of the last five and eight of the last ARCA races at Daytona with at least five cautions.
Granted, we saw The Big One occur in all three national NASCAR series, ranging from a last-lap crash on the final lap of the Xfinity race to one in the Cup race involving reigning champion Joey Logano.
But this ARCA race was broadcast live on FOX, a first in series history.
And its ratings were stellar.
Saturday's @ARCA_Racing race on FOX scored 1,160,000 viewers, making it the most-watched ARCA race from Daytona since 2013 (1,507,000) 💪@FOXSports #NASCAR
— Erik Arneson (@EBASports) February 19, 2025
The excellent ratings mean ARCA isn’t leaving Daytona nor leaving its location on the schedule as the season opener. Plus, it is steeped in history, tradition, and, for all involved, convenience; all the racing takes place at Daytona.
Yet are we satisfied with this product? Even as a proponent of the series, watching that race, especially the first half, was tough to watch.
How can we fix it?
Locking bumpers is not an option. Per a series official, ARCA used to not have a rule against locking bumpers and there were more accidents in the turns.
Per several folks within the garage, making slip tape on the racecars mandatory would be a welcome recommendation. Slip tape is mandatory in the national NASCAR series to minimize friction between the rear bumper of one car and the front bumper of another. It helps lessen the chances of someone getting turned.
Still, as one team member told Frontstretch, “It’s not going to fix not knowing how to push or take a push.” And when you have such a wide disparity of experience, that’s a challenge even though everyone, sans Brayton Laster, had an Ilmor engine in their racecar.
Regarding the mechanics of the racecar, many recommend making the cars go faster to spread the pack out and allow those with good handling racecars and talent behind the wheel to truly separate themselves from the rest of the field.
“Take the spoilers down and let the drivers go be drivers,” Andy Jankowiak said. “The way we have it now, you need to be a foot off the guy on the bottom on the corner exit to side draft, and when they cannot hold a line, we all get torn up in these huge packs. We’re stuck. Our drivers aren’t as aggressive. All we need is a little more separation. The top line is no man’s land because we are so locked down with the huge spoiler.”
Nearly all those folks plus the commentariat on those ARCA Facebook posts agreed the problem is the quality of the drivers.
Because it is Daytona, large multi-car crashes are expected in all series races.
The two drivers who caused the most cautions and social media piled were Amber Balcaen and Cody Dennison, so let’s address their actions.
Balcaen had quite a day, to say the least. Driving for Toyota-backed Nitro Motorsports, she was involved in three incidents en route to a 29th-place DNF. In her 44-race career thus far, she has only nine lead-lap finishes and 19 DNFs. She’s driven for Rette Jones Racing, VMS and now Nitro.
When she spoke to Frontstretch after her early exit, she said, “I’m fully sponsorship-based. I don’t have any family funding. So I need to raise 100% of the sponsorship to be able to race so we’re still working on that.”
Might her luck be running out? If she raises sponsorship, it won’t, but her bill to race ought to increase with wrecked racecars and an overall lack of success.
Dennison meanwhile debuted in ARCA last year. He only had four DNFs, and in the second half of the ’24 season, he had seven top 15s. However, his comments to FOX Sports after his Daytona crash were troubling.
“I’m just glad everybody’s alright cause that was a wild ride,” Dennison said. “It really was. It was kind of fun, you know. It’s kind of fun going through the infield and just, you know, not touching anything as a roller coaster. I hate it for everybody cause I know a lot of people spend money on it and, you know, so do I. It just didn’t work out and, you know, I didn’t really know what to do in that situation. I’ve never felt a weightless feeling so I just hate it for my boy Caleb [Costner] and a bunch of other people.”
‘It was kind of fun’; tearing up racecars costing teams money and time is fun?!
Look, Dennison has not been a problem in other races but those comments are worrisome and speak to a larger problem.
Drivers ascend through the ranks too quickly by buying rides from various teams.
The approval process is broken, even though ARCA has its preseason test.
ARCA has its East and West series. It ought to utilize those series as part of its approval process.
No offense to Cleetus fans, and he was not a problem during the race, but was he truly ready to run at Daytona?
Or how about Balcaen? If she continues to DNF as often, does ARCA need to revisit her racetrack licenses? Series officials decided that Rita Goulet was too inexperienced to compete at Dover Motor Speedway last year; can we expand the scope of who is allowed to drive at certain racetracks?
NASCAR has its NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series racetracks. Can the approval process be streamlined so that a driver must have success at one of those racetracks, then succeed in either an East or West standalone race or a national series short track race, progress up to larger racetracks, etc.? Or use selected series such as the zMAX CARS Tour, ASA Stars National Tour, etc. to approve a driver for those main-series short track races?
The approval process, and drivers with large checkbooks desiring to progress up to the NASCAR national series so rapidly, were the largest complaints from folks in the garage.
Until something in the model is fixed – and teams will accept approved drivers who are willing to write a check – we’ll be left with Mitchell’s words at the end of his time on the broadcast:
“Seven cautions,” he remarked, to which Phil Parsons replied, “Too many.” Mitchell answered, “That’s tough, you know.”
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.