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Dominant Season Leads to Owner’s Championship for Billy Venturini

www.arcaracing.com October 24, 2019

When Christian Eckes clinched the ARCA Menards Series championship with his fourth win of the season in Friday night’s season finale at Kansas Speedway, it put the cap on an incredible season that saw him earn the title despite missing the third race of the season, the spring race at Salem Speedway. Eckes became the first driver to miss a race and still go on to win the championship since Tim Steele did it in 1997.

Steele thoroughly dominated the series that season, winning a dozen races – including five in a row – winning the championship by 340 points over second place Frank Kimmel. Steele crashed heavily testing for his NASCAR Cup Series debut at Atlanta, forcing the team to withdraw from the finale.

Steele’s withdrawal from the finale cost him not only whatever points he would have earned in the race, but also the 250-point bonus for completing the final segment of the season. Even still, he finished well ahead of Kimmel in the driver and owner standings.

While Eckes won the driver’s championship without competing in every race, didn’t win eight races more than the next nearest driver. His championship margin, 25 points over teammate Michael Self, was the closest since Justin Lofton beat Parker Kligerman by just five points in 2009.

Eckes’ absence from the Salem race jostled not only the driver’s standings but the owner’s standings as well. Combined with an all-star cast of drivers rotating in and out of the third full-time Venturini Motorsports entry meant the owner’s standings would look vastly different than the driver’s standings for the first time since 1995.

 That year, Andy Hillenburg won the season opener at Daytona driving for Ken Schrader Racing. After he won the race, Hillenburg decided to pursue the series championship, doing so in his own racecars. He won the driver’s championship but since he had one less race in the owner’s standings, a race he won no less, second-place driver Bobby Bowsher’s owner Jack Bowsher was able to win the series’ owner’s championship.

The 2019 owner’s points championship was officially locked up when Harrison Burton rolled from the grid in the finale at Kansas. Burton won the season opener at Daytona for the team, and teammate Chandler Smith won five times on the short tracks with victories at Toledo, Madison, Elko, Iowa, and Lucas Oil Raceway. Add in strong performances by Brandon Lynn at Talladega, Logan Seavey at Springfield and DuQuoin, and Myatt Snider at Michigan and the No. 20 team’s dominance throughout the season becomes clear.

Six wins. Eighteen top ten finishes, with 14 of those in the top five. Thirteen races led for a total of 757 laps. Seven General Tire Pole Awards. All told, that put Billy Venturini’s No. 20 team 200 points head of his father, listed as the owner of the No. 15 team that Eckes drove in 19 of the series’ 20 races and Burton drove in the other.

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 on Monday, October 28.