DuQuoin, Ill. – The ARCA Menards Series drivers tackled their second and final dirt race of the 2025 season at the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds on Sunday (Aug. 31) evening, with Brenden Queen victorious. Queen took the lead from Lavar Scott late in the going, after an incident involving Brent Crews took him out of the running after leading most of the early stages of the race. Queen held off Scott, Lawless Alan and Kelly Kovski over the course of the final handful of laps to win his sixth race of the season.
As the season winds down, Queen has spent most of it atop the Frontstretch ARCA Power Rankings, but how did his fellow competitors fare in the series’ second and final dirt track race of the season?
1. Brenden Queen
Queen continued his ARCA dominance in 2025. Through 16 races, the 27-year-old has had six post-race trips to Waffle House following a win, and has only finished outside the top five three times all season long.
Queen didn’t dominate the race at DuQuoin like he has in some of his victories this season, however. Queen led 22 of the 100 laps en route to victory, capitalizing on other drivers’ misfortunes when the time mattered most.
The remainder of the schedule heavily favors Queen with three short tracks and an intermediate oval at Kansas Speedway. Queen found victory lane at Kansas in May, and short tracks are his specialty. Heading into Bristol Motor Speedway with a 42-point advantage, Queen might have the championship all but locked up, but don’t expect that to have a difference in his performance to close the season. He’ll likely be one of the favorites in each of the final four races.
2. Lawless Alan
Subtracting the number of race wins Queen has earned this season, Alan has matched his consistency almost perfectly, until the last few races when a streak of bad luck hit the No. 20 Venturini Motorsports team. Like Queen, Alan had only finished outside the top 10 three times prior to the race at Watkins Glen International. However, since then, he has done so three times. Incidents outside of his control at Watkins Glen, Illinois State Fairgrounds, and Madison International Speedway put a relative end to his championship hopes in 2025.
Enter DuQuoin, however, and Alan looked much like he had for most of the season. He won the pole, leading the field to the green flag for the first time since he did so at Talladega Superspeedway. Alan spent much of the race inside the top five, despite not leading any laps from the pole. His runner-up finish was his best finish since Iowa Speedway and his first runner-up finish since Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.
The damage has been done to his season standings, however. The poor luck put the 25-year-old 61 points behind Queen, in third place in the standings. The next race at Bristol marks a track where Alan has experience, running five NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races, and the 2024 ARCA race where he finished ninth.
3. Lavar Scott
Scott and Alan have shared parallels this season, despite the current points gap between the two sitting at roughly 20 points. The difference between the two, and what truly sets Scott apart from all of his competitors, is that his consistent finishes hardly waver. Where Queen and Alan have both finished outside the top 10 three or more times, Scott has only done it once. That race, Dover Motor Speedway, saw Scott deal with tire issues early and nearly rebound completely to capture that top 10, falling just short in 11th. Like Alan, though, the victories have not racked up, keeping Scott further out of the championship battle.
DuQuoin looked to be one of Scott’s best chances to break through for that victory from the minute cars hit the racetrack for practice Sunday afternoon. Scott set the fastest lap in practice and qualified fourth. He spent much of the first portion of the race inside the top three, and eventually worked his way around a dominant Crews on a restart inside of 30 laps to go. Scott didn’t quite have enough to hold off Queen, and a late spin made things go from bad to worse, resulting in a still-solid sixth-place result.
Scott sits 42 points behind Queen for the championship battle with four races left. It’d be a tall order, but with deeper fields expected at a few of the races, Scott’s still very much mathematically alive in the battle for the 2025 championship. Looking ahead to Bristol, Scott has two previous starts in Thunder Valley, finishing third in 2024 and 17th in 2023.
4. Isabella Robusto
While she likely still wouldn’t be right up with Queen, it’d be very interesting to see what Isabella Robusto’s season would look like without her first five races. After finishing outside the top 10 in four of the first five races and outside the top 20 in three of them, Robusto has recorded top 10 finishes in 10 of her last 11 starts, finishing inside the top five in six of those races. Though the start of her season seemed like it’d be plagued by poor luck and mechanical gremlins, it’s turned around into another story of impressive consistency.
Robusto’s night at DuQuoin fared much better than her last effort on dirt in Springfield. In that race, she finished last after a mechanical failure early in the going, marking her only finish outside the top 10 since the fifth race of the year. Robusto finished fourth at DuQuoin, escaping a late-race incident with damage, albeit insignificant.
Robusto has finally caught Jason Kitzmiller in points, tied with him for fourth. The duo is 139 points back with four races to go, likely unable to catch third-place Alan or be caught by sixth-place Alex Clubb. Like Queen, Robusto has excelled on tracks similar to those the series visits in the final four races, recording a worst finish of sixth on short tracks this season and earning a pole at Kansas in ’24. As for Bristol, the 20-year-old has yet to start a race at the track.
5. Jason Kitzmiller
The story surrounding Kitzmiller from the start to the back end of the year has completely flipped. Entering 2025, he was a veteran part-time driver who was unfamiliar with the series on short tracks, road courses and dirt tracks, sticking primarily to wide-open ovals. With the end of the season now in sight, it’s clear Kitzmiller can be consistent on all sorts of disciplines, not just the wide-open tracks he’d proven consistent at over the past few seasons.
The dirt tracks and road courses have proven troublesome for Kitzmiller in 2025. He took to short tracks quickly, but two finishes outside the top 10 on road courses and one on dirt make up for all but two of his finishes outside of that mark on the year. Kitzmiller was uncompetitive at DuQuoin, finishing 14th, six laps off the lead lap.
Kitzmiller is now tied with Robusto for fourth in the standings. Heading to Bristol, however, Kitzmiller has a pair of starts there, finishing 13th in 2020. Kitzmiller and CR7 Motorsports have a bigger task at hand for Bristol, however. Jason’s son Isaac Kitzmiller has a 19-point lead in the ARCA Menards Series East standings and Bristol is the East season finale.
Paint Scheme of the Race
While his typical teal and neon yellow AutoParkIT scheme stands out, Alan and VMS ran a slightly different variation of the No. 20 Toyota at DuQuoin, taking home this week’s Paint Scheme of the Race Award.
Alan swapped the yellow for a maroon color and the teal for a darker navy blue, giving his Toyota a nice breath of fresh air in terms of an alternate scheme for the dirt track race. The team also used the scheme at Springfield, but an early wreck cut its time on track significantly short.
Bristol hosts ARCA and ARCA East for the Bush’s Beans 200. The 200-lap race will take place on Thursday, Sept. 11 at 5:30 p.m. ET with TV coverage provided 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