Ty Gibbs, driver of the #18 Monster Energy/Terrible Herbst/ORCA Toyota, drives through a straightaway during the General Tire 125 for the ARCA Menards Series East at Dover International Speedway in Dover, Delaware on Friday, August 21, 2020. (Timothy Nwachukwu/NASCAR)
Ty Gibbs, driver of the #18 Monster Energy/Terrible Herbst/ORCA Toyota, drives through a straightaway during the General Tire 125 for the ARCA Menards Series East at Dover International Speedway in Dover, Delaware on Friday, August 21, 2020. (Timothy Nwachukwu/NASCAR)

Ty Gibbs Collects More Awards At Dover

www.arcaracing.com August 24, 2020

Ty Gibbs (No. 18 Monster Energy Toyota) dominated yet another race as he was the class of the field once again in the latest ARCA Menards Series East event at Dover. Gibbs cleaned up when it came to ARCA’s special awards, taking home just about everything there was to win on Friday afternoon. Instead of the winner’s trophy for the General Tire 125, though, Gibbs instead brought back a destroyed racecar after a flat tire resulted in a hard hit to the outside wall – an unsatisfying ending for the driver who was the top dog nearly all day long.

Gibbs started from the General Tire Pole position when he set a fast lap of 151.841 miles per hour in the morning practice session. Surprisingly, this was his first series pole in his ninth ARCA Menards Series East start. Gibbs joined New Smyrna polesitter Derek Griffith and Toledo polesitter Sam Mayer (No. 21 Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation Chevrolet) as the third driver to roll from P1 in as many AMS East races this year.

It did not take very long for the field to see the familiar sight of Gibbs’ back bumper once the green flag dropped. Gibbs kept his distance ahead of the pack until well after the second scheduled break of the afternoon, becoming the Richmond Water Heaters Halfway Leader and the Valvoline Lap Leader in the process. Gibbs also was the halfway leader at Toledo, while Derek Griffith was out front at the crossed flags at New Smyrna. Gibbs led the first 104 laps at Dover, running his season total to 291 AMS East laps led, before a closing Sam Mayer made a bold move to take away the top spot from Gibbs. Shortly after losing the lead, Gibbs had a right front tire let go and smacked the wall hard, relegating him to a DNF and a 12th-place finish. Mayer was able to cruise over the final 21 laps to take the win, his second of 2020 in AMS East competition.

Despite having a few more close encounters with his stablemates than his Venturini Motorsports team would prefer, Mason Diaz (No. 25 Drydene Toyota) was able to break away from the rest of the pack during the final green flag run and came home with a career-best third place finish and the Bounty Rookie of the Race award. It was an overdue change-of-pace for Diaz, who failed to finish the first two AMS East races of 2020 due to a crash not of his doing at New Smyrna and a faulty transmission at Toledo. Gibbs still paces the Bounty Rookie of the Year standings with 116 points, though Parker Retzlaff (No. 42 Ponsse Toyota) gained on Gibbs’ lead as he now sits in second with 110 points.

Dover is known as the “Monster Mile” for its speedy concrete surface, unforgiving walls and so-called self-cleaning high-banked turns, and the Monster got to work quickly at the start of Friday’s race. Four drivers were done for the day with mechanical woes before the race even reached the first break. While the early attrition was a disappointment for those teams out of the running by the one-third mark of the race, it wound up working out in the favor of one driver. Chuck Buchanan Jr. (No. 87 Spring Drug Ford), the owner-driver of his own small, underfunded, independently-operated single-car team, rose from his 16th-place qualifying run to finish 10th when the checkered flag flew, collecting the K&N Filters Hard Charger award for his effort. This was just Buchanan’s second top ten in 28 AMS East races. Buchanan made his superspeedway debut in February at Daytona in the ARCA Menards Series race and was named the Hard Charger for that race as well – making him a perfect 2-for-2 in earning that award on the season, winning it in both races he has started this year.