After four top ten finishes in 2018, including an eighth-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway that matched his previous career best, Petersburg, West Virginia’s Codie Rohrbaugh (No. 7 Grant County Mulch Chevrolet) started the 2019 ARCA Menards Series season in style by crossing the line in seventh place in the Lucas Oil 200 driven by General Tire at Daytona International Speedway.
Rohrbaugh stayed in the mix at the front of the field until the action he saw out of the windshield got a little too crazy.
“We wanted to run up in the top ten and we were around sixth or seventh when the guys around us just started racing way too hard,” Rohrbaugh said. “We decided it would be better to drop out of that pack and let it settle down a little. We dropped back to about 20th and just rode around for a little bit.
“After that caution at around lap 70 we decided it was time to go. We got back into position and we were right there for that last restart.”
Rohrbaugh hooked up with Sean Corr on the final one-lap dash to the finish, and as the top ten raced off turn four the finish he dipped to the inside to find room to slide to the inside, but stayed locked into seventh.
“I was pretty aggressive pushing the 43 (Corr) on that restart,” Rohrbaugh said. “I wanted to get that top line going. As a driver I wish there would have been another lap because we weren’t really up to speed yet and I’d like to have seen what we can do, but I really think that was the way to go. It was a lot cleaner than last year. I actually had a bet with my spotter Tim Fedewa. I didn’t think we were going to see the checkered at the end, so he won.”
Rohrbaugh has stated his intentions to compete for the General Tire Superspeedway Challenge title in 2019, and his finish is a great start to his nine-race ARCA schedule.
“We’re running the Truck race at Daytona and we’re going to run all of the superspeedway ARCA races,” Rohrbaugh said. “The way our speedway luck has been, we’re pretty happy to come out seventh and in one piece. That’s not what we were there for. We want to come back and compete for some wins.”
Rohrbaugh will get his next chance when the ARCA Menards Series takes on Talladega Superspeedway on April 26.
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