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Natalie Decker Wants to Repeat and Improve at Daytona

www.arcaracing.com February 1, 2019

In 2018, Natalie Decker made ARCA history by starting from the General Tire Pole and finishing fifth in the season-opening Lucas Oil 200 at Daytona International Speedway. It was no walk in the park for the Eagle River, Wisconsin native as she navigated a mine field of incidents, narrowly avoiding a couple of them, before scoring her first-ever ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards top-five finish.

Decker has made a change for 2019, moving from Venturini Motorsports to DGR-Crosley Racing. She will run an ecclectic racing schedule throughout the year, spending time in Europe racing the new Formula W series in addition to wheeling the DGR-Crosley entry in most of the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series races and a select number of ARCA Racing Series events.

“We had a lot of fun last year,” Decker said during the recent two-day pre-season test at Daytona. “I like the schedule we’ve put together for this season. It’s going to be a big challenge but I am looking forward to it.”

Decker was tenth overall in the pre-season test, turning a fast lap at 181.921 miles per hour in her No. 54 N29 Capital Technologies Toyota in the draft. Her pole-winning speed last year was an most identical 181.859 miles per hour. She’d like to repeat her qualifying performance but pick up a few positions – four to be exact – at the end of 200 miles on the 2.5-mile tri-oval.

“It was great to start from the pole last year,” she said. “It was definitely a hard race. We had damage to the car and it overheated on the last restart. If not for that I think we could have done even better than fifth. It would be great to come down and get our season started with a win. I am going to miss all the ARCA people this year but we had a great time last year. I’m looking forward to the ARCA races we’re doing this year. I think it’s going to really help us when we run the Truck races too.”

The first official track activity of the season will come on Thursday, February 7 when the teams receive two hours of practice starting at 4 pm ET. There will be another hour of practice on Friday, February 8 starting at 9:30 am ET followed by General Tire Pole Qualifying at 3:30 pm ET. The green flag will wave over the expected 40-car field in the Lucas Oil 200 driven by General Tire at 4:30 pm ET on Saturday, February 9. ARCA for Memembers can access live timing & scoring, live chat, and live track updates from Daytona exclusively at ARCARacing.com; new members can register for free at ARCARacing.com/login.