Jake Finch dominated the General Tire 125 to earn his first career ARCA Menards Series East victory. He led 89 of the race’s 127 laps and held off a hard-charging Landen Lewis in a two-lap overtime dash to win by 0.164 seconds.
Venturini Motorsports has won the last four ARCA Menards Series platform races: the team won the ARCA Menards Series West race at Irwindale Speedway with Sean Hingorani on April 1, and then the ARCA Menards Series race at Talladega Superspeedway with Jesse Love and the West race at Kern County Raceway Park with Hingorani on April 22.
Lewis finished second in his ARCA Menards Series East debut. The current ARCA Menards Series West championship points leader, Lewis has finished second in all four of his ARCA Menards Series platform starts so far in 2023. Lewis has also finished no worse than second in any of his debut races across the platform; he finished second at Springfield in his ARCA Menards Series debut in 2021 and won at Kern County in his West debut in 2022.
Luke Fenhaus started 14th in the 15-car field and raced his way to third at the finish, his second consecutive top-five finish in two career East starts.
William Sawalich started from the General Tire Pole after qualifying was washed out on Friday. Sawalich, making his first-ever start on a track bigger than 5/8ths of a mile, led the first two laps before drifting to the back of the top five, eventually finishing fourth.
Lavar Scott took the lead early, leading four laps, but fought an extremely loose racecar on his way to fifth at the finish, his second consecutive fifth-place finish.
Zachary Tinkle started second and finished sixth, his best career East finish.
Toni Breidinger was battling for a top-five finish before a fuel line failure brought her car to a stop under the third and final caution of the day. She lost two laps as her team made repairs eventually finishing seventh.
Ed Pompa finished eighth, his best career East finish.
Conner Jones dominated through the first of two scheduled cautions at lap 30, but the handling on his car went away after the restart and he dropped two laps off the pace. His team made adjustments under the second caution of the day and his car came back to life, running laps faster than the leader. Jones was racing among the leaders with just a handful of laps remaining when the right front tire went down at speed entering turn three, sending Jones hard into the SAFER barrier. He was uninjured in the crash and was credited with ninth at the finish.
Sean Hingorani, a two-time ARCA Menards West winner in 2023, finished 42 laps off the pace after his engine struggled to come to life at the start. Once his team got the car running, Hingorani ran competitive lap times and picked up five valuable points as he competes for both ARCA Menards East and West championships.
The next race for the ARCA Menards Series East is the Music City 200 at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway on Saturday, May 13. The race will be streamed live on FloRacing starting at 8:30 pm ET. ARCARacing.com will have live timing & scoring of all on-track activity and up-to-the-minute updates are available by following @ARCA_Racing on Twitter.
Story - ARCA Menards Series