Christian Eckes Ends Roller Coaster Season Ends with Championship Trophy in Hand

The ARCA Menards Series is based in suburban Toledo, Ohio, just north of the state line in tiny Temperance, Michigan, about 75 minutes from Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. For those who love roller coasters, Cedar Point is paradise. It has rides like the Top Thrill Dragster, that take you from zero to insane in three seconds then shoot you up 300 feet straight into the sky, and old standbys like the Blue Streak, a wooden coaster that dates back to the early days of the peninsula’s existence as an amusement park.

One ride in particular, the Maverick, takes you on an untamed 150-second ride that drops you 100 feet at a 95-degree angle and completely inverts you twice. The ride, as intense as it is, was redesigned shortly before it opened because it was actually too intense for humans to withstand.

Christian Eckes’ 2019 season might not have been Maverick levels of intense, but no one could argue that it wasn’t a roller coaster ride of emotion for the 18-year-old from Middletown, New York.

Eckes and his Venturini Motorsports team celebrated the ARCA Menards Series championship with his fourth win of the season in Friday night’s finale at Kansas Speedway, undoubtedly one of the highest moments of the season. It was quite a comeback after experiencing the lowest of lows throughout the month of April.

The roller coaster ride started in Daytona, as Eckes finished fourth at Daytona after starting from the General Tire Pole. His Daytona momentum carried over to the following week when he also earned the pole for his first start at Daytona in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series. ARCA’s second race of the season was its first short track race and marked a return to Five Flags Speedway for the first time since 1992, and Eckes nailed down his second straight top-five finish when he crossed the line in third. Two top-fives in the first two races of the season propelled Eckes to the lead in the series’ championship standings and he was headed back to the site of his first career series win at Salem Speedway for round three.

But just like every good roller coaster drops out from under you and starts you on a wide ride of ups and downs and twists and turns, that’s when the bottom dropped out of Eckes’ season.

After Saturday practice and qualifying at Salem, Eckes fell ill and spent the night in the hospital. It was determined the best course of action was to sit out to recover; Harrison Burton substituted and finished eighth but missing the race dropped Eckes out of the lead and 80 points behind race winner Michael Self in the standings.

Back to one hundred percent, Eckes returned to the seat at Talladega with high expectations. He had started from the pole at Daytona and was in the mix all day long. Instead of another climb upwards, Talladega turned into an unexpected drop with a 12th-place qualifying run and a 26th-place finish after being swept into an accident coming to pit road at the race’s midway point. That dropped him all the way to eighth in the series standings, and seemingly out of championship contention.

The wildest roller coasters give you a big drop early on and then stay intense with switchbacks and loops, and Eckes made sure his season would stay intense with a win the next time out at Nashville. Another strong run followed in the rain-shortened race at Toledo, a third-place result behind his Venturini Motorsports teammates Chandler Smith and Self. A series of quick switchbacks followed, a seventh at Charlotte, a third at Pocono, and a pair of sevenths at Michigan and Madison, the latter after a spin with 20 laps to go. Eckes finished second at WWT Raceway, but then finished eleventh at Elko after a last corner tap from Self while racing for fourth.

The early summer was full of ups and downs, quick turns back and forth. The dog days of summer and the fall were intense and fast.

A runner-up finish at Iowa kicked off a stretch of seven races that saw Eckes climb from fourth to first in the standings and erase a 115-point deficit to Self. Throughout those seven races, he won three times – Pocono, DuQuoin, and the finale and Kansas – and never finished lower than second. Even engine problems in qualifying that necessitated a change, forcing him to start from the rear of the field, couldn’t keep him out of victory lane at Kansas, giving Eckes one final loop-the-loop before pulling back into the station and finally letting out the sigh of relief that the ride is over.

Eckes finished the season with four wins, thirteen top-five finishes and seventeen top-ten finishes. He earned four General Tire Pole Awards, and led 400 laps on his way to the first championship for Venturini Motorsports since team owner Bill Venturini won in 1991. And he also became the first driver to miss a race and still go on to be champion since Tim Steele in 1997.

ARCA’s 67th season will come to a close when Christian Eckes will officially be crowned the 36th ARCA Menards Series champion on Saturday, December 14 at the Championship Banquet held at the Indiana State Convention Center, held annually in conjunction with the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show. Tickets to the black tie gala, which are also available to the general public, will go on sale the first week of November.