Mitch Calvert
The title of the race provided a little foreshadowing for Fort Frances native Steve Arpin at Saturday’s ARCA RE/MAX Drive Smart Buckle Up Kentucky 150 at the Kentucky Speedway.
Arpin was rear-ended on Lap 79—putting his seat belt to work and ending his race prematurely.
He wound up in 29th place.
“When you go into a cement wall at 180 miles per hour, it hurts,” Arpin lamented.
“It sucked,” he added. “We passed four guys on the restart, and then the next lap [Gabi DiCarlo] got into the back of us and put us into the wall.
“It was a car that we had just lapped, and it got into the back of our car, took the load off the back tires, spun us out, and put us into the wall hard,” Arpin recalled.
James Buescher and Justin Lofton traded the lead back and forth four times before Buescher bounced off and then cruised to Victory Lane.
Lofton, Arpin’s Eddie Sharp Racing teammate, moved into the ARCA points lead with 1,285—75 ahead of Patrick Kilgerman (1,210).
Arpin is ninth with 935 points on the year.
Arpin’s roller-coaster rookie campaign on the ARCA circuit took a cruel turn for the worst on the weekend with a string of bad luck.
“We had tire issues at the start,” he noted. “Right rear tire’s inner liner, which is in the tire to prevent a big wreck when you get a flat tire, ended up leaking, and that extra air pressure went into the main part of the tire.
“That tire problem took us out of the first half of race, and we were in survival mode rather than race mode,” he explained.
Arpin said the late crash was especially disheartening because his car was capable of a solid finish.
“We put four tires on during the first pit stop and were back up to the top 10, and made a final pit stop ahead of the other guys to try to have track position later in the race,” Arpin recalled.
“We had a really good car, but right after that pit stop, we got taken into the wall.”
But the 25-year-old is taking his lumps and not looking back—knowing the adversity will help him in the long run.
“We just haven’t had any luck go our way,” Arpin admitted. “Good program put together, crew chief on board, and we’re in line for a top-five finish.
“It’s just a matter of getting luck to go our way.
“It’s been tough, but we’ll put this weekend behind us, focus on the next, and eventually it’s going to go our way.
“You can only have so much bad luck,” he reasoned.
“The kid has no fear and is one heck of a wheelman,” crew chief Jefferson Hodges told www.stevearpinracing.com
“I haven’t seen someone this good in a long time,” he added. “I think that if we can give him a good car to drive, there is no doubt that he will be winning races.
“There were a lot of unplanned mishaps that happened throughout the race that were out of anyone’s hands,” Hodges stressed.
Arpin now is setting his sights on the Menards 200 this Saturday (May 16) at Toledo Speedway in Toledo, Ohio.
In related news, a bus caravan is being organized here by Brenda Kellar to head down to Newton, Iowa for the ARCA RE/MAX Series Prairie Meadows 200 on July 10-11.
“We’re looking at approximately $200 (U.S.) per person, which includes the bus trip, one night’s hotel, and a race ticket,” said Kellar. “We have 45 seats available, and in order to make it happen I’m going have to sell all 45 seats.
“I’m putting a May 31 deadline on it to see if I can get 45 people who are interested, then I’ll commit more to it,” Kellar stressed.
“I’ve had probably 10-15 calls, and probably 10 seats confirmed so far.”
The trip will include breakfast with Arpin, and also may feature garage tours up-close-and-personal with ARCA racers and their teams, though that hasn’t been confirmed just yet.
“I’m a huge race fan, and when I used to manage Pizza Hut, we used to sponsor his dirt car,” Kellar noted. “I’ve been following him [Arpin] since he was a wee guy.”
For more information on the bus trip, contact Kellar at 274-1206.
Meanwhile, as first reported in Friday’s Daily Bulletin, Arpin also is in the running for the ARCA RE/MAX Series most popular driver award.
Arpin is second in total votes this month, and is among the top five overall along with Art Seeger, Tony Palumbo, Frank Kimmel, and Alli Owens.
Voting continues until Oct. 23, which can be done by logging on to ARCANation.com and clicking the “driver poll” button at the top right-hand side of the driver’s page.
“It’s pretty cool,” Arpin admitted. “It just shows the support we have from the fans back home and all across the country.”
