The 2025 ARCA Menards Series season is underway, and like the 2024 season opener at Daytona International Speedway, it began messy. Brenden “Butterbean” Queen won, scoring his first career victory.
Nine drivers are set to run full time this year – 10 if Kole Raz runs full time. As such, for the second year, the Frontstretch ARCA team of Mark Kristl, Josh Calloni and Kaleb Vestal rolls out our expectations for those drivers.
Lawless Alan
After running full time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for the past three years, Lawless Alan has ventured down to ARCA this year. He made six starts last year, scoring one top five and four top 10s.
Goals for 2025?
“I’m going to do my damn-dest to make everything that I can out of it,” Alan told sports reporter RJ Starcevic. “These opportunities only come once in a lifetime. To get the support from Toyota, to be put in the best stuff, it’s something that not many people get and fewer take advantage of. So, I’m looking to be the guy that takes full advantage of that opportunity. I’m taking it as serious as I possibly can and I’m incredibly grateful.”
Taking full advantage ought to mean topping Kris Wright’s numbers from last year. Wright too came to ARCA but failed to lead any laps and still managed to finish third in points.
Alan already has led laps (26), and he is going to need to probably run stronger given a full timer has already won this year. Nevertheless, piloting the No. 20 for Venturini Motorsports, with talented up-and-comer Isabella Robusto as his teammate, Alan should be a factor in the championship storyline. – Mark Kristl
Cody Dennison
Best known for his YouTube channel CAMELOT331, Cody Dennison competed full time in ARCA in 2024 (DNQ’ed for both Daytona and Phoneix Raceway), with an average start of 16.8 and an average finish of 14.3.
Unfortunately for Dennison, his only moment to shine last year came in a dark moment, when Dennison was collected in a crash with Wright at Iowa Speedway, where Dennison had a few choice words of frustration toward Wright.
His goal for 2025? Stay relevant.
Competing for wins will be tough, especially as he competes for Fast Track Racing against teams like Joe Gibbs Racing and Venturini. However, he could rattle off some more top-10 finishes that could make him more relevant on the racetrack.
If he can finish better in races in ‘25, his sophomore season could see him competing for a top five in the point standings, bettering his position from last year where he finished seventh. – Kaleb Vestal
Jason Kitzmiller
Jason Kitzmiller finished third at Daytona, second highest of the series regulars. His performance was a quiet one, but he certainly is a wild card this year.
“We’ve been preparing for this moment since we landed in the ARCA Menards Series in 2020, and I believe we can have a memorable season with a lot of hard work, determination, and a little luck,” Kitzmiller said in his 2025 announcement.
Kitzmiller’s ARCA resume features one top five – that third-place run – and nine top 10s.
Ten-time ARCA champion Frank Kimmel is Kitzmiller’s crew chief this year.
Kitzmiller only has two short track starts, both at Bristol Motor Speedway, and zero starts at road courses and dirt tracks. Kimmel, meanwhile, has 41 ARCA short track trophies and 14 dirt ones, but none on road courses. Whether Kitzmiller can succeed at those racetracks is the key to his 2025 points finish. – Kristl
Brayton Laster
For any driver piloting a car for a small team, the goal is much different than those driving for larger teams on larger budgets. Wayne Peterson Motorsports and Brayton Laster’s goals should be no different, make it to every race by securing sponsorship, finish every race cleanly, and develop both on the track and underneath the hood as the season goes on. The team started their 2025 campaign with a 24th-place finish at Daytona.
Neither Laster nor WPM are strangers to ARCA at this point, but the team hasn’t had a singular full-time driver in years, and Laster has yet to tackle a full-time schedule in his own right. That sets up the 22-year-old to see a multitude of tracks for the first time, but also allows the team to have newfound consistency behind the wheel every week, certainly helping grow their program as well. Finishing inside of the top 10 in the points standings at year’s end, and recording a top 10 or two on the short tracks seems like a realistic, and attainable goal for this team. – Josh Calloni
Michael Maples
The goal in 2025 for Michael Maples is simple: keep growing as a driver and develop his team into a weekly contender more and more each race. The second-year driver finished eighth in the point standings during his rookie season in 2024. Any improvement should be the end goal for the 61-year-old. The Sooner driver is still searching for his first career top 10, and perhaps scoring multiple throughout 2025 is a possibility, especially at races with smaller fields.
However, unlike most of his competitors, Maples will balance team ownership in 2025 for the first time, owning two entries throughout the season. Watching the team grow, while also developing his racing skills, should be another primary focus for 2025. The team scored a top 10 at Daytona, in its No. 67 with Ryan Roulette behind the wheel. Maples himself was in the lead draft before the early wreck put him 31st, so things are looking positive after the season opener for Maples Motorsports. – Calloni
Thad Moffitt
“My main goal is to win races,” Thad Moffitt told Racing Refresh. “I now have all the resources to do that, and I’d like to run for the championship and be in the conversation for it. The ARCA field is getting pretty competitive with drivers like Lavar Scott in the Rev Racing car, “Butterbean” Brenden Queen in the 28, and several Venturini cars. It’s going to be a tough battle, but I want to be in the championship conversation in the final races of the season and hopefully bring home the championship. Beyond that, I’m focused on constant improvement.”
Moffitt has 46 ARCA starts. He has nine top fives, highlighted by a pair of third-place results, and 26 top 10s. However, he only has 13 laps led.
Winning races is a lofty goal. Of those 46 starts, less than half (22) were lead-lap finishes. Moffitt is driving the best equipment of his career, but first he must progressively improve.
Can Moffitt win races? Newcomer Nitro Motorsports enters with high expectations; Moffitt faces a tall challenge to meet those.
Lead-lap finishes, then top 10s, top fives, leading laps and contending for wins are in order to contend for the title. – Kristl
Brenden Queen
While already winning one of ARCA’s biggest races of the season, Butterbean’s goals for 2025 have already started on a strong foot.
“I think my goals would be to take it one race at a time, learn the bigger tracks and how the air works along the way, while also being a contender for wins and the championship,” Queen told Frontstretch.
The 2024 zMAX CARS Late Model Stock Car champion is one step ahead of the ARCA field with his win at Daytona and is on par with being one of the championship contenders for 2025.
So what would you say the goal for Queen is this year? Just like he did at Daytona: win.
He has the personality and the talent to be a southern gem that NASCAR has looked for. If he can dominate on the track and end up in victory lane most weekends, he will be a threat to hoist the ARCA championship in 2025. If that happens, look for him to be in NASCAR in the near future. – Vestal
Isabella Robusto
Robusto had an eventful debut in ARCA last September at Kansas Speedway, where she qualified on the pole for her fourth-ever ARCA race. However, that race was also a learning experience, when on lap 1 she was involved in a wreck of her own doing.
The 20-year-old South Carolina driver has a lot of talent. You don’t just score two top fives in four ARCA starts of pure luck. With support from Toyota, as long as she keeps her head on straight and grows as a racer, she will prosper in ARCA.
So what should her goals be in 2025? It’s simple: continue that growth.
We’ve seen many talented drivers in the past couple of years get rushed up the developmental ladder way too quickly. Women drivers like Hailie Deegan and Danica Patrick, who had shots of making NASCAR a forever home, went with the wind because they were not ready for the big stage.
If Robusto continues to learn in ARCA, she could have a successful year that could set her up for a great career down the road, and a possibility to fight for a championship this season. – Vestal
Lavar Scott
Lavar Scott should have one goal in mind after his 2024 rookie campaign, win multiple races en route to a championship in 2025. The 21-year-old started his second full-time ARCA season much like he finished his first, by recording a top five at Daytona.
Scott was the definition of consistency in 2024, scoring top 10s in 15 of the 20 races he ran, and top fives in 11 of those races.
His race-to-race goal should be simple: turning some of those top five runs into wins in 2025. His primary competition at many of these races, William Sawalich, won’t be in the field in as many races this season, giving Scott the odds-on favorite at many different tracks. Finding an extra gear, and finishing out races that he runs well in, translating them into victories will be the key to Scott hoisting a championship at Toledo Speedway come October.
Leading more laps will be a strong indicator of that this season, as he only led 144 in 2024. However, if the growth shown throughout Scott’s 2024 season is any indication, he should have no issue doing that throughout the next 19 races. – Calloni
Kole Raz
Raz first must find the backing to run full time. If he does that, he is a dark horse for the title.
Raz has seven ARCA Menards Series West starts. He won in a photo finish at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway and has three top fives and six top 10s.
AM Racing has ARCA experience with Christian Rose behind the wheel of its Ford for the past two years. Rose only managed five top fives and 23 top 10s.
Raz wound up sixth at Daytona. Again, he is a talented driver.
His West races were at short tracks, a staple on the national circuit. AM has solid equipment, so if he runs to the level of his racecar, he’ll be OK at the intermediates.
On the short tracks, the rest of the field ought to take notice: Raz will be fast. And that could convince AM to field him in more races, especially if he runs well in the next race at Phoenix. – Kristl
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.
Josh joined Frontstretch in 2023 and currently covers the ARCA Menards Series. Born and raised in Missouri, Josh has been watching motorsports since 2005. He currently is studying for a Mass Communication degree at Lindenwood University