Sam Mayer, driver of the #21 Chevy Accessories Chevrolet, gets out of his car after the practice of the Menards.com 200 presented by SPxE for the ARCA Menards Series on July 31, 2020 at at Toledo Speedway in Toledo, Ohio. (Nic Antaya/ARCA Racing)
Sam Mayer, driver of the #21 Chevy Accessories Chevrolet, gets out of his car after the practice of the Menards.com 200 presented by SPxE for the ARCA Menards Series on July 31, 2020 at at Toledo Speedway in Toledo, Ohio. (Nic Antaya/ARCA Racing)

Sam Mayer Excited About Being Back On The Road

www.arcaracing.com August 13, 2020

Sam Mayer has made quite an impact on ovals.

From becoming the youngest NASCAR regional or national series champion in history last year, to collecting his first two career ARCA Menards Series wins two weeks ago at Ohio’s Toledo Speedway. The 17-year-old from Franklin, Wisconsin, though, is looking forward to throwing it back to his ‘younger’ days when the series heads to Florida for Friday’s General Tire 100 at the DAYTONA Road Course.

“It’s pretty much my entire background,” said Mayer of his racing upbringing. “Any time I get a chance to go run a road course I get pretty excited about it. Especially a place like Daytona.”

The General Tire 100 at the DAYTONA Road Course (5 p.m., MAVTV / TrackPass / MRN) will be the 12th race of the ARCA Menards Series. More importantly for Mayer, it will be round six of 10 of the Sioux Chief Showdown. With Mayer’s sweep of Toledo, he is third in the Sioux Chief Showdown standings. He trails Chandler Smith by seven and Michael Self by one.

Mayer, who was involved in a multi-car wreck in a sports car race at Wisconsin’s Road America last weekend, said they’ll have a standby driver just in case. But he’s in it to win it.

“We’ll see how I feel throughout the course of the race, whether I make one lap or all 28 laps,” said Mayer in a video conference all with media this week. “If I run the whole race I know I can win it.”

#29 Bryan Herta Autosport w/ Curb Agajanian Hyundai Veloster N TCR, TCR: Parker Chase
Parker Chase will make his ARCA Menards Series debut Friday at the General Tire 100 at the DAYTONA Road Course. (IMSA)

Parker Chase Ready For Debut

Road course races tend to bring out new faces to the series, and the ARCA Menards Series is no different.

Canadian Andrew Ranger, a three-time NASCAR Pinty’s Series champion, is the only driver to win more than one ARCA Menards road course race. He dropped in and swept the events at New Jersey Motorsports Park from 2011-14. Ranger won four of his five road-course starts in the series including his 2011 debut at New Jersey.

Parker Chase is looking follow suit, as he will pilot the No. 22 Vertical Bridge Ford for Chad Bryant Racing.

The 19-year-old from New Braunfels, Texas, has nine starts in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, including in February when he was part of the AIM Vasser Sullivan that included NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch. That teaming was also the impetus for his ARCA Menards debut.

“Kyle is the one who got me hooked up with Jack Irving at TRD,” said Chase in a video conference all with media this week. “Jack and Chad Bryant have known each other for a while and he helped introduce me to Chad. We had been talking about maybe running at Watkins Glen but when they announced the race was moved to the Daytona road course we decided we needed to do it.”

Chase is also a development driver on the stock car side with Chad Bryant Racing, running select Late Model Stock races in the southeast, where the team said he has impressed with speed and finishes inside the top 10.

Chase said there are definitely differences between the two disciplines.

“I noticed in the late model stuff people are aggressive, putting bumpers on each other,” said Chase. “In sports car stuff, even if there was an opportunity for contact all you’re going to do is tear up your dive planes, your splitter, and someone else’s diffuser so it’s going to be a different dynamic for sure.”

So what does he expect from running Daytona in a stock car?

“I think there will be quite a few different lines through the new chicane,” said Chase. “It will be quite an equalizer. There’s an opportunity to take quite a bit of curb there. It just depends on of they put tire bundles down there or not.”

The most recent series road course was in 2017 at Road America. The race was won by Austin Theriault, who went from fifth to first after avoiding a pair of last-lap crashes in front of him.

Notes

  • There have been 22 previous road course races in ARCA Menards Series history, held at 10 different venues: Heartland Park Topeka, Meadowdale International Raceway, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, New Jersey, Palm Beach International Raceway, Road America, St. Louis International Raceway, Streets of Des Moines, Virginia International Raceway, and Watkins Glen International.
  • ARCA’s first road course race was October 19, 1958 at Meadowdale International Raceway outside of Chicago, Illinois. Fred Lorenzen was the winner. Meadowdale held two more races, in 1960 and 1964, won by Nelson Stacy and Elmer Musgrave, respectively.
  • Justin Marks won the only ARCA Menards Series road course race in the rain, in 2010 at Palm Beach.
  • Other winners include Ken Schrader (Heartland Park), Darrell Waltrip (Heartland Park), Lorenzen (Meadowdale), Stacy (Meadowdale), Musgrave (Meadowdale), Jack Bowsher (Mid-Ohio), Justin Allgaier (New Jersey), Patrick Long (New Jersey), Casey Roderick (New Jersey), Kyle Weatherman (New Jersey), Parker Kligerman (New Jersey), Justin Marks (Palm Beach International), Chris Buescher (Road America), Theriault (Road America), Bob Schacht (St. Louis International), Scott Lagasse (Streets of Des Moines), Curtis Turner (Virginia International Raceway), and John Finger (Watkins Glen).