Mitch Calvert
Steve Arpin made a good first impression as a member of Venturini Motorsports on Saturday en route to a fourth-place finish at the Pennsylvania 200 from Pocono Raceway.
It was the Fort Frances native’s best finish on the ARCA RE/MAX Series since a fifth-place showing at the Tim Richmond Memorial 200 in late June while as a member of Eddie Sharp Racing.
“I’m excited about what’s going to come in the near future with our new team,” said Arpin on his website www.stevearpin.net. “We had a great car [Saturday] and got a good feel for the direction we are going to be heading as we move on.
“We had an awesome car and it was a pleasure to drive,” Arpin enthused. “It took a few laps to get adjusted to the new feel, but it’s only going to get better and better each week.”
Arpin would lead nine laps during the race, pacing the field on laps 38-41 and 43-47, while maintaining second spot through laps 48-80.
A beck-and-neck battle between Arpin and points leader Parker Kligerman saw the two cars bump with three laps remaining, ending Kligerman’s day and leaving Arpin battling to maintain fourth spot.
“It’s a bad deal that we got together with Parker there at the end,” Arpin lamented. “He races all of us clean each and every week. I feel horrible for getting into him, [but] we just got a little tight and got his left rear [tire].
“He had a shot at winning that race and we were still in it to win it as well,” Arpin added.
Justin Lofton of ESR held off a hard-charging Matt Merrell to win. Lofton crossed the finish line three lengths in front of Merrell to earn his second consecutive Series victory.
With eight stops left on the ARCA RE/MAX Series, Arpin will undoubtedly have two ARCA races in particular circled on his calendar, including the next stop on tour at the Allen Crowe 100 in Springfield, Ill. (Aug. 23) and the Southern Illinois 100 in DuQuoin, Ill. (Sept. 7) both taking place on dirt tracks.
Much of Arpin’s career success has come on dirt tracks—including several undefeated seasons at the Emo Speedway—before making the switch to asphalt this season on the ARCA circuit.
Arpin is seventh in the ARCA points standings through 13 events with 2,675, narrowly behind Bryan Silas (2,710) for sixth.
Lofton took over the points lead with the win (3,190), followed very closely by Kligerman (3,185) in second spot. Frank Kimmel rounds out the top three with 2,900 points to date.
