The sun has set over the 2025 ARCA Menards Series season, with over 100 drivers competing over its 20-race schedule.
Eight different drivers found themselves in victory lane this season, but none more frequently than series champion Brenden Queen, who took the checkered flag to Waffle House on eight separate occasions. Queen recorded top-five finishes in 17 of the 20 races this season, finishing every race and leading 843 laps.
Brent Crews found victory lane four times, the second most on the circuit, despite not being old enough to run in the series full time. That prevented him from competing for a championship, leaving Rev Racing’s Lavar Scott and 51-year-old rookie Jason Kitzmiller to fill out the top three in points behind Queen, with Scott second and Kitzmiller third.
Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2025 here
Many things stood out throughout the season, as noted in this year’s Frontstretch ARCA Season Awards for 2025.
Top Storyline of the Year: Venturini Motorsports Shuts Its Doors
After over 40 years in the series, VMS ran its final race in 2025. Early in the 2025 season, the team announced that it would sell its assets to Nitro Motorsports at the conclusion of the season, with Billy Venturini remaining in a leadership role for Nitro moving forward. The announcement concluded a 43-year run featuring 110 wins, 108 pole awards and six driver championships.
The team’s final victory took place shortly after that announcement as Lawless Alan found victory lane at Talladega Superspeedway in late April. The team went winless for the vast majority of its final season and ran its final event in ARCA Menards Series West competition at The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The Venturini’s exiting the series leaves behind quite a reputation, one that very clearly goes into the higher levels of the sport as well.
Venturini had many drivers over its history, including a number of current stars in the NASCAR Cup Series, including Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell and William Byron. Additionally, 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck and Xfinity Series champions Corey Heim and Jesse Love piloted a Venturini Toyota.
The team also gave opportunities to many women, even fielding a championship-winning all-woman pit crew. The team had a number of women drivers too, including Toni Breidinger, Hailie Deegan, and most recently, Taylor Reimer and Isabella Robusto. The team even fielded four women driving at the Illinois State Fairgrounds race in 2024.
2026 will visually look quite similar for Nitro as it did for Venturini in 2025. The team is expected to field many of the same car numbers, and will retain Thomas Annunziata, Leland Honeyman and likely Robusto, each of whom drove for the Venturini in 2025. However, the Venturini namesake will still be notably absent, beginning a new era for ARCA.
Top Race of the Year: Kentuckiana Ford Dealers ARCA 200 at Salem Speedway
There is no shortage of candidates for this award in 2025, as the on-track product in ARCA rarely wavered. Both superspeedway races at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega, as well as some fantastic short track racing at tracks like Berlin Speedway and Phoenix Raceway.
However, the race that stuck out most was the late-season short track event under the lights at Salem.
Scott led a large portion of the race, in search of his first career win, only to lose the lead on a late restart to Queen, who nailed the jump to retake the lead. The race had its perfect blend of good on-track product and natural drama, as well as championship implications, as Queen had yet to clinch the title at that point in the season. The race also saw its share of comers and goers at the front, as Max Reaves endured some tire issues that took him out of contention for the win, further fueling the drama throughout the 200-lap event.
Breakout Driver: Brent Crews
Crews didn’t even run half of the 20 races on the ARCA schedule in 2025, but his presence was surely known. Crews found victory lane in four of his nine starts, leading 542 of the 1,132 laps he competed in and finished 11th in the national division points. In addition, he earned four poles in his nine starts, and only finished outside of the top 10 twice, both due to incidents largely out of his own doing.
Crews triumphed in all three ARCA series. He earned three wins in the ARCA Menards Series East en route to a seventh-place points finish and wins in both his ARCA Menards Series West starts.
It’s not the first ARCA season that Crews has made his presence known, running four races in each of the two previous seasons, and finding victory lane in both. That makes his breakout hardly a surprise, but by the end of 2025, Crews solidified himself as a legitimate prospect, also aided by a handful of strong runs in the Truck Series toward the conclusion of its season.
Disappointment of the Year: ARCA East Field
The East series was dominated by two entries in 2025, the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 and the Pinnacle Racing Group No. 28, much like it was in 2024. However, unlike the previous season, neither entry had a full-time driver. The No. 18 was split between Reaves and Crews, with the No. 28 being run by Queen at the combination races and Connor Mosack and Austin Green at a pair of other races. The No. 28 even skipped two events at Flat Rock Speedway and the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway.
That left the championship battle to be fought between Tyler Reif, Isaac Kitzmiller, Takuma Koga, Austin Vaughn, Brad Smith, and Zachary Tinkle. Four of those six drivers competed in underfunded equipment, and while each of them had a number of notable runs in 2025, none were legitimate title threats. That left the championship battle between Kitzmiller and Reif, and the title fight went down to the wire at Bristol Motor Speedway.
While Kitzmiller and Reif both had their fair share of top fives and top 10s, neither found victory lane in 2025. In fact, neither was even particularly close. They led a combined nine laps, with Reif leading all nine at Nashville and Flat Rock. The championship battle showed a stark difference between the Sawalich versus Connor Zilisch edition a year prior, and frankly, it was fairly disappointing.
Paint Scheme of the Year: Helio Castroneves
Teams brought dozens of different paint schemes to the track all season long, with many standing out from one another in a plethora of ways. Nitro had its fair share of unique ones, for example. Annunziata ran a Jeff Gordon Nicorette throwback at Portland International Raceway in the ARCA West race in August, and Thad Moffitt rocked a very sporty Induction Innovations-sponsored No. 46 Toyota at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park in July.
However, none stand out more than the car driven in perhaps the most anticipated ARCA debut of the year. To be approved to run the Daytona 500, Helio Castroneves made his lone ARCA start in the season opener at Daytona. With backing from Trackhouse Racing, Wendy’s was on the PRG No. 82 that day.
The sporty blue Chevrolet endured its hardships that day, getting involved in a handful of incidents, but crossed the line in fifth, and certainly looked good doing so.
The 2026 ARCA season will begin at Daytona on Saturday, Feb. 14 at noon ET with TV coverage provided by FOX.
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
Ok great article on drivers mentioned in these articles ,but the real story should be on up incoming driver Taylor Reimer who has proven herself to be a model of consistency in ARCA series and should be given a full time ride in 2026