After a nearly two-month hiatus, the ARCA Menards Series is back this weekend, taking on the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway.
The last time the national division took to the track, it was March 7 at Phoenix Raceway. Brent Crews got around Brenden Queen on a late restart to win, marking both his first ARCA win of 2025 and his first win on pavement in the series.
This week, however, Crews isn’t entered for the race, as he is not yet 18 years old and isn’t eligible to make a start at Talladega. There are, however, 38 cars entered for the General Tire 200, up slightly from last year’s total of 34.
In the 2024 race, Jake Finch dominated in a Venturini Motorsports entry, leading all 76 laps en route to victory. The race went incident-free, with only one caution flying, the scheduled race break.Â
Finch is back to defend his title this year, and is only one of three previous national division winners entered in the field, joined by Queen and William Sawalich. Finch returns to VMS this week, one of four cars the team has entered for Talladega. Finch will slide over to the No. 25, with Patrick Staropoli in the No. 15. Staropoli will make his first career start at Talladega. However, he has a race at Daytona International Speedway under his belt back in 2015.Â
Also running for VMS this week are the team’s two full-time drivers, Isabella Robusto and Lawless Alan. Robusto has never competed at Talladega before, but ran inside the top 10 for much of the season opener at Daytona before being taken out by an accident. For Alan, it’s his first ARCA start at the track, but he has a handful of starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, with a best finish of fifth coming last October.
Sawalich returns to the series for another tuneup this week, marking the first of three consecutive national division starts, followed by races at Kansas Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway. Despite moving onto the NASCAR Xfinity Series full time in 2025, Sawalich will run the superspeedway races and other large ovals at the ARCA level for more laps this season. He did so at Daytona, finishing second. His Talladega experience is limited, never making an ARCA start at the track and only competing there once. That particular race came last October in the Truck Series, where he started on the pole and finished 27th after mechanical issues.Â
Daytona winner and current points leader Queen is also going into Talladega fresh, never competing at the track in any series. However, limited drafting experience didn’t hold him back in the season opener, when he found victory lane after leading 10 laps. After not finishing worse than second after two races this season, Queen has an 11-point lead in the standings over second-place Lavar Scott, and will look to build on that with a deeper field entered for this weekend.
Speaking of the Rev Racing driver, Scott heads to Talladega for the second time in his career, with hopes that this year’s result will be better than the first. Despite showing speed last year, engine issues put the No. 6 team multiple laps down, en route to a 31st-place finish, by far the worst of Scott’s career.
Outside that race, though, Scott has had a knack for drafting-style racetracks, finishing inside the top five in his two other attempts. So far into 2025, Scott has only led 10 laps, all at Daytona, but picked up where he left 2024 off, scoring top fives. After a fourth-place effort at Daytona and a fifth at Phoenix, he sits second in the points, still in search of his first career win.
Nitro Motorsports, fresh off an announcement that it’ll acquire Venturini’s assets at season’s end, brings two cars to Talladega. Thad Moffitt, per usual, pilots the No. 46, with sponsorship from Induction Invocations. Moffitt has four previous starts at Talladega, with a top five and three top 10s. The start of 2025 has been the tale of two opposites for Moffitt, finishing 37th at Daytona after being involved in The early Big One, and seventh at Phoenix. He sits 11th in points after two races, 47 marks back from Queen. The team’s second car, the No. 70, will be driven by Amber Balcaen, who returns after not competing at Phoenix. Balcaen finished 29th driving for the team at Daytona back in February.
Kole Raz spent 2023 and 2024 competing part time in the ARCA Menards Series West and is now piecing together a full-time national series effort with AM Racing. Both team and driver could not have asked for a better start to the season, finishing sixth in back-to-back races and sitting third in the standings, 15 points behind the leader. Raz, however, has never competed at Talladega, like many of his counterparts this weekend, and the start will automatically become the largest track he’s competed on at the ARCA level. His only other drafting experience came at Daytona, where he remained inside the top 10 for most of the event, narrowly missing out on a top five finish when the checkered flag flew.
Jason Kitzmiller will be in his third race of his first full-time ARCA season, and will do so at one of the tracks he’s most familiar with. In his part-time tenure in previous years, Kitzmiller drove largely at the larger racetracks. The 51-year-old has five starts at the 2.66-mile track and six at similarly-styled Daytona. His best Talladega finish of eighth came back in 2020, but he is coming off a career-best third place at Daytona in the season opener.
Perhaps the most anticipated return to the series this week is Garrett Mitchell, best known as Cleetus McFarland. Mitchell drove the No. 30 for Rette Jones Racing at Daytona to a 30th-place finish after a pair of crashes early. Since then, it was announced that he will return for both Talladega and Bristol Motor Speedway in September. Fans can tune into Mitchell’s in-car camera feed on NASCAR’s YouTube page throughout the race on Saturday.
Andy Jankowiak has entered all three races this season and heads to Talladega for the fifth time in his career, still searching for his first win. Talladega has not always treated the 37-year-old kindly, only finishing inside the top 10 once in 2021. He has shown prowess on the drafting-style tracks, however, recording four top 10s at Daytona in five attempts. He finished eighth there in February and followed that up with a 14th-place finish at Phoenix in March. After two races, Jankowiak sits fifth in points, 25 notches behind the leader.
The series’ four other full-time drivers, Michael Maples, Alex Clubb, Brad Smith and Brayton Laster, each will look to avoid the chaos of Talladega and survive for a good finish. Maples was caught up in the early wreck at Daytona and finished 21st at Phoenix. Laster finished 24th after a crash at Daytona and finished 22nd at Phoenix. Clubb survived Daytona for a 16th-place finish and finished 25th at Phoenix. Meanwhile, Smith withdrew from Daytona and finished 33rd at Phoenix.
ARCA teams will not get a qualifying session this week, instead just a one-hour practice session Friday afternoon, with the starting lineup set by owners’ points. That practice session is slated to begin at 4 p.m. ET on Friday. The green flag for Saturday’s General Tire 200 at Talladega will fly at 12:30 p.m. ET with TV coverage being carried by FOX Sports 1.
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