Dan Falloon
Fort Frances racer Steve Arpin is going to have a tough time topping the week he just had.
In the span of six days, the 26-year-old earned his first win on the ARCA circuit in Salem, Ind., landed a new sponsor, and was named to JR Motorsports’ Nationwide team for the next two races.
Then he collected his second ARCA win for good measure.
The most recent victory came Friday night at the Rattlesnake 150 in Fort Worth, Tex., where he held off Craig Goess by 0.326 seconds to take his second-straight checkered flag.
Arpin will have the chance to hit the Talladega track twice this week as he’ll compete in the Talladega ARCA 250 on Friday night (April 23) before making his Nationwide Series debut Saturday afternoon in the Aaron’s 312.
He was awestruck at the opportunity to hop into JR Motorsports’ #7 car—vacated earlier in the week when Kelly Bires was released from the team.
“As a young racer growing up, one of the coolest things in the world would be to have an opportunity to drive for Dale Earnhardt, Jr., he’s the biggest name in the sport,” enthused Arpin.
“It’s the most incredible opportunity I could ever dream of.”
Arpin has been tapped for two Nationwide races given JR Motorsports is planning to audition multiple drivers for the vacancy.
He also is scheduled to take the wheel at the Bubba Burger 250 at Richmond International Speedway on April 30.
Reaching the Nationwide level—one step below NASCAR’s premiere series—is another wish achieved for Arpin.
“It’s every driver’s dream,” he remarked.
“My first dream coming to asphalt racing was to get onto Daytona International Speedway,” Arpin recalled. “Just to be a part of that elite group of drivers that has that opportunity.
“The next dream was to go on and win some ARCA races, and the next dream from there is to have the opportunity to compete at the Nationwide level.
“And to have the opportunity to compete for Dale Earnhardt is one of those deals that you dream about.
“You don’t think that it’s actually ever going to happen,” he admitted.
Arpin also welcomes the chance to have a look at the track in ARCA race conditions before heading right back out there the following day against a higher level of competition.
“I’ve got an opportunity to go out and do a lot of learning in the ARCA race, and then go out in the Nationwide deal and hopefully have a good run in that,” he said.
“[Earnhardt, Jr.] and I are going to sit down this week and spend a good afternoon going through lots of the do’s and the don’t’s of restrictor plate racing, so that’ll be a great help for me,” he added.
As for the work of prepping for two races, Arpin said he’s willing and ready to put in the extra time.
“It’s not a problem,” he shrugged. “If you get the opportunity to race two races in one weekend, you don’t complain.”
Still, even with the Nationwide opportunity, Arpin doesn’t plan to let the ARCA circuit fall by the wayside, especially now that he has a 10-point lead in the standings with 865.
“First things first, we’ve got to stay true to business,” he stressed. “We’ve got a great team on the ARCA side, and no matter what happens on the other [Nationwide] side, we’re going for the ARCA championship,.
“We’ve got to stay focused, keep our heads on straight.”
This past Friday night, getting a second-consecutive victory was in doubt before the race even started.
Qualifying on Thursday was rained out, so the starting grid was based on 2009 owners’ points, dropping Arpin to a 22nd-place start.
“Right from the start of the race, we knew we had a winning race car,” he enthused. “We knew we had a good car, we knew we were going to make it to the front.”
However, Arpin also knew restraint was a must since the bunching of cars early in the race would make aggressive driving more likely to result in disaster.
“It’s one of those deals where you just really have to use your head,” he explained. “You could really get yourself collected in some bad situations right away if you push it too hard.”
Arpin felt he was able to remain patient and more-or-less stave off trouble, which he admitted was out of character for him.
“I was actually being really smart about it, believe it or not,” he remarked. “I’m used to being a little bit over-aggressive in situations like that because I just want to go, go, go.
“I really pushed it hard in the first corner, and got as many people as we could get in the first corner,” he recalled.
“Then I just kind of settled in, and then it was ‘Alright, let’s let everyone spread out a little bit, and then start passing them one at a time instead of trying to pass three or four or five at a time.’”
It wasn’t a totally clean race. On Lap 12, Arpin was involved in a minor fender-bender with Patrick Sheltra, Joey Coulter, and teammate Mikey Kile.
None of the drivers were forced to drop out of the race, but Arpin said the laid-back approach saved him from being knocked out of contention.
“We were really smart about it, and lucky enough that in the incident we did get involved in, because we were kind of hanging back, we didn’t get enough damage to take us out of the race completely,” he noted.
Still, the damage was potentially crippling to his chances as the front fender, which sustained the lion’s share of the hit, is crucial to keeping the car running on course.
“[There was] lots of front fender damage,” he reported. “The front fenders are the most important things on these race cars to keep them turning because they create all the down force on the car.
“Once you get front fender damage, it just completely changes the balance of the whole car,” he explained. “And once you change the aerodynamic balance of the car, then your mechanical balance is no longer correct, either.”
He praised his pit crew for their response, citing their positive attitude in the face of adversity.
“We were able to take the next couple pit stops to fix the body damage as best we could, and use the remaining couple pit stops to adjust the car and compensate for the way the damage was affecting the race car,” he lauded.
“It was one of those deals where we just never gave up.”
Arpin floundered a bit midway through the race as he adapted to the changing car, but kept his head above water and in position for a victory.
“We struggled through the middle of the race a little bit,” he conceded. “We maintained good track position, but struggled through the middle of the race while we were adjusting the race car to get it to where we needed it to be.
“My guys in the pits just made awesome calls all night long, and we just had great, great, great restarts,” he added.
“Our restarts were perfect, every restart,” he stressed. “We made a lot of passes each and every one.
“It put us up front, and [we] got in the clean air and went onto win the race.”
Arpin also picked up a two-race sponsorship from Mike’s Hard Lemonade, beginning with Friday’s race.
He was thrilled to have received the extra backing.
“To have a company like that supporting us is a pretty incredible thing,” he enthused.
