Jesse Love, driver of the #19 NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota, passes Blaine Perkins, driver of the #9 Sunrise Ford/Four Star Fruit-Lucas Oil Ford, during the first ENEOS/Sunrise Ford Twins presented by West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame race for the ARCA Menards Series West at the Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah, on Saturday, June 27, 2020. (Isaac Hale/ARCA Racing)
Jesse Love, driver of the #19 NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota, passes Blaine Perkins, driver of the #9 Sunrise Ford/Four Star Fruit-Lucas Oil Ford, during the first ENEOS/Sunrise Ford Twins presented by West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame race for the ARCA Menards Series West at the Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah, on Saturday, June 27, 2020. (Isaac Hale/ARCA Racing)

NOTEBOOK: Familiar Rivalry Headlines West Doubleheader Weekend

www.arcaracing.com October 22, 2020

For drivers Jesse Love and Blaine Perkins, the ARCA Menards Series West’s trip to California for a Friday-Sunday doubleheader marks two more chances to stake their claim at a potential championship.

For their California-based race teams, the ninth and 10th events of the 2020 season at All American Speedway in Roseville and Kern County Raceway Park in Bakersfield, respectively, add significant bragging rights to the stakes.

RELATED: Schedule info for West doubleheader

Bill McAnally Racing team will field four Toyotas — Gio Scelzi in the No. 16, Love in the No. 19, Holley Hollan in the No. 50 and Gracie Trotter in the No. 99 — in both Friday night’s NAPA Auto Parts 125 presented by CashInTheCan.com (7 p.m. PT / 10 p.m. ET on TrackPass) and Sunday afternoon’s NAPA ENEOS 125 presented by West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame (2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET on TrackPass).

Likewise, Bob Bruncati’s Sunrise Ford Racing will field the same cars for both races, a pair of Fords driven by Trevor Huddleston (No. 6) and Love (No. 9).

And the numbers suggest there’s little reason to believe the winners of these races won’t come from the series’ top two stables.

Jesse Love, driver of the #19 NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota leads the pack down the front stretch during the ENEOS 150 Presented by NAPA Auto Parts for the ARCA Menards Series West at Colorado National Speedway in Dacono, Colorado, on Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Chet Strange/ARCA Racing)
Jesse Love, driver of the #19 NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota leads the pack down the front stretch during the ENEOS 150 Presented by NAPA Auto Parts for the ARCA Menards Series West at Colorado National Speedway in Dacono, Colorado, on Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Chet Strange/ARCA Racing)

Forget the fact that Love (405 points), Perkins (389), Trotter (374), Scelzi (361) and Huddleson (354) make up the top five in ARCA Menards Series West championship points this season with three races remaining. Their teams have dominated recent races at both All American and Kern County.

In 2008, the West series returned to the speedway in Roseville after a 26-year hiatus and has raced there at least once per year since. A Toyota has won at the 0.333-mile oval eight times in that span, all of them owned by McAnally.

McAnally has been even better at Kern County Raceway Park, located almost 300 miles south of Roseville in Bakersfield. His No. 16 entry has won six consecutive West races (Todd Gilliland in 2016 and 2017; Derek Kraus in 2017, both in 2018 and 2019) at the half-mile oval.

Scelzi surely appreciates that stat as he prepares for his ninth and 10th West races in McAnally’s No. 16.

Yet McAnally and his drivers are well aware Bruncati’s team is more than capable of stealing one or both of the weekend’s shows.

Bruncati’s cars have won three of the last four West races at All American. And when Cole Rouse won for BMR at the track in 2018, he did so ahead of both Sunrise cars.

Dylan Lupton’s 2014 victory marks Bruncati’s only West win at Kern County, a track at which the series has raced since 2013.

A doubleheader triple

The 2020 ARCA Menards Series West schedule changes forced by the COVID-19 pandemic have thrown teams and drivers a series of curve balls. But at this point in such an unprecedented year, doubleheaders are met with a sense of normality.

The doubleheader consisting of the race at All American on Friday and the race at Kern County on Sunday will mark the third time in 2020 that the ARCA Menards Series West has competed multiple times on a single weekend.

The first was in June, when the Utah Motorsports Campus in Grantsville, Utah, hosted two events — the ENEOS/Sunrise Ford Twins presented by the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame — on the same day. Love and Perkins split those races, marking the first ARCA Menards Series West win for each.

The second doubleheader of the season came in August, when Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington, hosted the ENEOS/NAPA Auto Parts 100 the day before Douglas County Speedway in Roseburg, Oregon, hosted the ENEOS/NAPA Auto Parts 150.

Perkins won both of those races.

Gracie Trotter’s arrival

Love has a 16-point lead over Perkins in the West championship standings with three races remaining, and Trotter is 15 more points behind Perkins in third. Yet Love and Perkins must be careful not to let last month’s Las Vegas race become a microcosm for the championship battle.

Love and Perkins were battling for the lead at The Bullring when they got together and allowed Trotter to pass them. The 19-year-old, of course, went on to win her first ARCA Menards Series West race.

Trotter in the process became the second female winner in the history of the West series following Hailie Deegan’s victories in 2018 and 2019. She became the first female winner under the ARCA Menards banner.

After that historic win, Trotter admitted she entered the season not expecting to be where she is now. But the signs were there. She had entered the Vegas race having finished no worse than seventh with five top-five finishes in seven events.

Now Trotter is putting legitimate pressure on Perkins in the standings. And her new goal is to win the last three races of the season.

“The first win comes with many more,” she said.

And more:

– Taylor Gray will pull double duty for DGR-Crosley this weekend in his third and fourth West starts of the season, having also raced in the Utah doubleheader in June. He has no experience at All American or Kern County. “My spotter, Brandon McReynolds, has raced at both of these tracks in the past, so he’s been a big help coaching me and telling me what to expect from each track,” said Gray, 15. “It’s nice to have someone in the spotter’s stand who knows the tracks and can help me navigate my first races there.”

– Before moving across town to Kern County Raceway Park, the West series ran 45 races at the now-defunct Mesa Marin Speedway, also in Bakersfield. The first race was in 1977, won by Jim Reich. The final race was in 2005, won by Mike David.

– Love leads the series with a 2.13 average finish in the first eight races of the season. He has three wins (Utah, Irwindale and Colorado National), and his worst finish of the season was fourth at Evergreen.

– Love also leads the Valvoline Lap Leader standings with 314 laps led. Perkins is second with 279.

– Love and Trotter are the only two drivers who have completed 100 percent of the laps thus far in 2020, having been on track for all 889 laps. Scelzi and Hollan are third and fourth with 877 and 876, respectively. Perkins is fifth with 855.