After Tough Start to 2019, Joe Graf, Jr. Trying to Find Better Luck to Close 2019 ARCA Menards Series Season

Sometimes a driver and his team can put forth maximum effort and not have anything to show for it. That’s been the story of Chad Bryant Racing and Joe Graf, Jr. (No. 77 EAT SLEEP RACE Ford) to this point in the 2019 ARCA Menards Series season. Despite hard work and effort, Graf and team have struggled to keep on Lady Luck’s good side and as a result, the finishes don’t match the results.

In six of the first twelve races this season, Graf has finished outside the top ten. It’s not the results he nor the team were expecting heading into the 2019 season. Graf, who was a Bounty Rookie Challenger in 2018, earned his first win last season at Berlin and missed another at Talladega by the closest of margins. Expectations were high headed into 2019, but those expectations were tempered by bad luck right from the start.

“As far as effort, everyone has put a lot of effort into it and we’re trying as hard as we can,” Graf said. “It’s just what really hurts us is we have been having so much bad luck with things that are out of our control. If there is one thing I can take out of these first twelve races is we’ve all learned so much mental toughness from it. We know what character building means now, one hundred percent. We trust that transmissions will be put together the right way. For the first time ever, we had one put together wrong at Daytona. It only had fourth gear. Then we hit a plastic bag and overheated. We had a plug wire come off. We broke a spark plug at Charlotte. It’s just fluke stuff that no one at the team has any control over. We have put forth A effort to get C results because a lot of things outside of our control.”

Graf has earned a reputation as a hard charger in his brief time in the ARCA Menards Series, one not afraid to swap paint in the heat of the battle. He believes that’s a product of the way he came up in racing on the tough northeastern short tracks.

“I think a lot of that is my background,” he said. “I grew up racing short tracks in the northeast in a Legends car and a modified. In those SK modifieds, that’s how you race. You have those big bumpers and you can move people. I raced late models for a very short period of time. A lot of these kids that’s where they grew up and for me it was a very short period of time. Racing in those modifieds, the bump and run is just what you do. That’s how I am as a driver. I am very physical as a driver. Short track racing is about putting the bumper to someone. Not to wreck them, but surely to move them. When you go to a place like Elko, that’s just how it is. You can’t do that on the big tracks but that’s short track racing.”

Getting some good luck – or just not having any bad luck – would certainly help Graf close out the 2019 season, but there are some things he’s going to work on improving over the last eight races of the year.

“One thing I need to improve on is we need to practice better,” he said. “We have some good practice sessions but then we have others where it takes me a little longer to get going. My goal the second half of the season is to unload off the truck and fire off fast and not have to find that speed. I want to be quick right off the truck. Then you are tuning on stuff and not making big swings.”

Graf does have some races circled on his calendar as races he thinks can turn his season around. One of them is the next race on the schedule, the Menards 250 at Elko Speedway.

“If there is one track I am looking forward to going back to it’s Elko,” he said. “It was our best track last year. I feel like we had that race won on a couple of occasions but it just didn’t go our way. I am looking forward to going back there and hopefully getting a win. I think we are really close to turning the corner on some things. I think Elko is definitely one of the places we can go and win. It’s where I got my start. I think we’ll be pretty competitive at Salem. We were good the first time there but a mistake on pit road there right before it rained out cost us a bunch of spots. We came out ninth and we never really went back green.

“It’s really frustrating because we’ve had a lot of speed. We qualified in the top five at Salem and ran up front all day and came down pit road right before it rains out and lost four of five spots on pit road and it rains out. That was frustrating. We had an alright run at Nashville. We ran okay at Michigan. We ended up fourth there. I am looking forward to going back to Pocono. It’s near home so it’s always fun going to Pocono.”

Graf hasn’t closed the book on 2019 just yet, but knows it’s time to start focusing on 2020 too. He’s working on finalizing plans to make a big leap for next season.

“I’d like to be running in the XFINITY Series next year,” he said. “We’ll see how that all plays out. I don’t have anything concrete yet, so we’ll see.”

Graf and the rest of the ARCA Menards Series returns to action on Saturday July 13 in the Menards 250 at Elko Speedway. Practice is set for 2:15 pm ET/1:15 pm CT, General Tire Pole Qualifying is scheduled for 6:15 pm ET/5:15 pm CT, and the 250-lap feature event will go green shortly after 10 pm ET/9 pm CT. The race will be televised live on MAVTV, and ARCA for Me members can follow every lap made my every car entered throughout every on-track session with free live timing & scoring at ARCARacing.com. Discounted tickets to the Menards 250 are available at nearly 40 Minneapolis-St. Paul Menards locations for just $20. For more information, please visit ElkoSpeedway.com or call (952) 461-7223.