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Tuesday, July 3, 2012 ARCA Racing Series Opens New Jersey Activity Saturday

MILLVILLE, N.J. -- No driver in ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards history has won more than one race on a road course, but that should come as no surprise. This weekend's 150-mile event at New Jersey Motorsports Park's Thunderbolt Raceway is just the 16th road event in 60 years for ARCA's top tour. If anyone is to earn multiple road course trophies in ARCA competition, Andrew Ranger might be the man to do it. Ranger, of Roxton Pond, Quebec, won last season in New Jersey and returns just over 13 months later with the same team. ARCA Racing Series teams will practice twice Saturday, from 11:20 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. and 1:40 to 2:40. Menards Pole Qualifying presented by Ansell - in groups of five as determined by practice speeds - will start at 4:30. The 67-lap, 150-mile race - the fifth for ARCA on the 2.25-mile New Jersey course - will start at 1 p.m. Sunday, with live timing and scoring and live audio coverage presented by the ARCA Racing Network available at ARCARacing.com. The ARCA event is one of several races scheduled over New Jersey's All-American Race Weekend presented by Global Barter Corporation. ARCA's road course history is as follows, with winners listed in parentheses: October 19, 1958: Meadowdale Raceway, Carpentersville, Ill. (Fred Lorenzen) August 14, 1960: Meadowdale (Nelson Stacy) April 1, 1962: Virginia International Raceway, Danville, Va. (Curtis Turner) July 19, 1964: Meadowdale (Elmer Musgrave) July 25, 1965: Mid-Ohio Sports Course, Lexington, Ohio (Jack Bowsher) May 18, 1986: St. Louis International Raceway, Fairmont, Ill. (Bob Schacht) August 5, 1991: Heartland Park, Topeka, Kan. (Ken Schrader) August 2, 1992: Heartland Park (Darrell Waltrip) July 3, 1994: Des Moines Grand Prix, Des Moines, Iowa (Scott Lagasse) July 7, 2001: Watkins Glen International, Watkins Glen, N.Y. (John Finger) September 28, 2008: New Jersey Motorsports Park, Millville, N.J. (Justin Allgaier) September 13, 2009: New Jersey (Patrick Long) February 27, 2010: Palm Beach International Raceway, Palm Beach, Fla. (Justin Marks) August 15, 2010: New Jersey (Casey Roderick) May 22, 2011: New Jersey (Andrew Ranger) Outside of Ranger, top notable entries include: 2012 race winners Brennan Poole, Chris Buescher, and Alex Bowman; nine-time ARCA champion Frank Kimmel; rising star Chase Elliott; three-time Chili Bowl Midget Nationals champion Kevin Swindell; and Tom Hessert of Cherry Hill, N.J. A full collection of race entries is listed at ARCARacing.com. 2012 is the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards' 60th Anniversary Season, featuring 20 races at 18 tracks. The complete 2012 event schedule is available at ARCARacing.com. The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards has crowned an ARCA national champion each year since its inaugural season in 1953, and has toured over 200 race tracks in 26 states since its inception. The series has tested the abilities of drivers and race teams over the most diverse schedule of stock car racing events in the world, visiting tracks ranging from 0.375 mile to 2.66 miles in length, on both paved and dirt surfaces as well as a left- and right-turn road course in its most recent season. This year, the series visited Alabama's Mobile International Speedway and Minnesota's Elko Speedway for the first time. Founded by John and Mildred Marcum in 1953 in Toledo, Ohio, the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) is recognized among the leading sanctioning bodies in the country. Closing in on completing its sixth decade after hundreds of thousands of miles of racing, ARCA administers over 100 race events each season in three professional touring series and local weekly events.
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