Jake Finch and Gus Dean spent most of the 2026 ARCA Menards Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway controlling the pace for Nitro Motorsports.
Their 1-2 tandem draft at the front of the field led every lap after ARCA’s mid-race break on lap 40 and proved impossible for anyone to break through.
But during a restart with two laps left in Saturday’s (Feb. 14) General Tire 200, the Nitro duo chose to restart side-by-side. That left them vulnerable to runs from outside competition heading onto the backstretch.
And in a split second, with one ill-timed bump, their success slipped sideways head-on into the wall.
The replay shows Gio Ruggiero’s No. 18 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing making contact with Finch on the inside line. Finch took a hard right into his teammate alongside him, taking both cars out while the field scattered behind them.
Ruggiero went on to survive one final restart and win the event. After the race, he made clear that the contact felt like a racing incident.
“You know, I was obviously just trying to push the 15 [Finch] there to get our lane, the bottom rolling,” winner Ruggiero said. “And get us a good lead to try and make a move to win. But I don’t know, it looked like the 25 [Dean] came down on him a little bit, came sideways on my nose.
“Unfortunate there he got wrecked.”
But the Nitro teammates, after an initial misunderstanding between them, have a very different view of what transpired.
“The 18 [Ruggiero] just kind of drove through [Finch] there, from what I hear,” Dean explained, making clear he hadn’t seen an official replay. “Definitely feel like the Nitro cars should be 1-2 today. Just unfortunate circumstances that we’re not.”
Finch, who hasn’t had the best relationship with Dean, initially felt his teammate was to blame. But the two later chatted, with Finch apologizing on pit road while leaving Dean to explain how the duo’s Daytona success turned sour.
“We did the teammate restart with seven [laps] to go [side by side], and it worked out,” Dean explained. “But the 18 was really shoving on my bumper through that restart and really trying to prevent us from doing that teammate restart.
“I knew they were going to be ready for it with the caution coming right after that. And my thought process was, I don’t want to tear up two racecars trying to pull a teammate restart. Both of us up on the front row, controlling the race I felt was going to be a better call.
“I think if the drivers would have been a little more patient with it, maybe it would have worked out. But it didn’t.”
Finch, who didn’t speak much on the record about the incident, agreed they had put themselves in the best possible position to win the race.
“I think everything was good,” Finch said. “I think we put ourselves in a really good situation, and I think we had a really fast car. I think we did it really right.
“I think we executed as perfectly as we could have. I think we had a really good racecar. Tyler Monn [spotter] up top did a spectacular job and put us in a situation to be in the lead and lead a bunch of laps and be there at the end, and that’s all you can ask for.
“I don’t think there’s anything we could do. It’s unfortunate.”
The wreck highlighted a horror story of a finish for Nitro, which had already lost Isabella Robusto from the front pack after a mechanical failure. Robusto had led 11 laps earlier in the race, the most for a woman in a Daytona ARCA event since Patty Moise led 33 laps back in 1989.
The crash was especially unfortunate for Dean, the 2024 ARCA Daytona winner, who is only running a limited schedule for Nitro this season. He’ll pop up next at Talladega Superspeedway while turning his attention to a different form of racing: his Vengeance Mega Truck.
For Finch, he’ll head to Phoenix Raceway in pursuit of larger dreams, but a little bit of his frustration came out when asked whether he can take any positives away from his day out front at Daytona.
“No,” he said simply before walking away. “Not at all.”
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The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 50+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.