Mitch Calvert
Another frustrating weekend ended on a positive note for Fort Frances native Steve Arpin in the Carolina 200 at the Rockingham Speedway on Sunday.
Arpin struggled in qualifying, clocking a lap time of 26.296 seconds to start in 27th spot, and actually went right into the pits and dropped to 42nd to begin the race.
But he found a way to work his way up to 10th place after the dust had settled.
“We had the complete wrong set-up in the car and we had a real tough time getting it to do what we needed it to [during Saturday’s qualifying],” Arpin lamented.
“And it being an impound race, you aren’t allowed to touch the car until you start racing, so right from the get-go [on Sunday] the whole team got together and made a whole bunch of decisions on what we were going to do.
“We made wholesale changes all the way through the race, made about 10 pit stops,” Arpin noted. “We changed springs, shocks, weight placement, and cranked 47 turns on our screw jacks into our springs.”
Arpin said the car definitely was a work-in-progress, but the time in the pits paid off and he credited the rest of his team for getting it capable of a top-10 finish.
“We went to the back 10 times, and every time we just kept tweaking on it,” he recalled.
“It just shows how hard work and perseverance pays off at the end of the day, and it just shows how important being with the right team is, to have that kind of knowledge behind you.”
Veteran Ken Schrader dominated much of Sunday’s race in North Carolina, but it was rookie Sean Caisse who drove off with the trophy after Schrader ran out of gas with three laps to go.
Patrick Sheltra, who finished second, leads the overall points race with 620. Arpin currently is 10th with 425.
“We hoped to be a little better at this point as far as points go, but the first few races didn’t go as planned and we’ll move forward,” Arpin remarked.
“We definitely didn’t expect to be in the situation we were at to start [Sunday’s] race, but we met [Monday] and made some important decisions about the race program and have some changes we put in place to improve our results.”
At the same time, the 25-year-old doesn’t have much time to dwell on what could have been as he’s off to the famed Talladega Superspeedway for the fourth race in the ARCA RE/MAX Series this Friday.
“It’s going to be better,” Arpin pledged.
“Speedway races are all about making smart decisions and staying out of trouble.
“You just have to make sure to get in the draft because if you lose the draft, you are going to end up far down early,” he conceded.
“I’ll just focus on getting good track position, being smart about it, and we’ll end up in a good position by the end of the week.”
