The 2020 ARCA Menards Series season was one to remember for reasons beyond the fact that its schedule came to a halt after just two races when the COVID-19 outbreak reached the United States.
Eight months later, the dust of a complete schedule of 20 races settled to reveal an underdog champion and multiple milestones reached for drivers of all ages.
AWARDS:Â ARCA Menards Series Virtual Championship Celebration
Bret Holmes, 23, clinched the 2020 ARCA Menards Series championship over 30-year-old Michael Self in the season finale at Kansas Speedway. Along the way, 19-year-old Hailie Deegan accumulated enough points to win the Bounty Rookie Challenge and become the series’ first female Rookie of the Year.
And as 18-year-old Ty Gibbs proved in his 16 starts, age was just a number in the ARCA Menards Series this season.
Below are the 2020 ARCA Menards Series winners of the Valvoline Lap Leader Award, the General Tire Victory Bonus, the General Tire Pole Award, the Cometic Crew Chief Award, the R.E. Lightning Challenge, the S&S Volvo Long Haul Award, the General Tire Superspeedway Challenge and the CGS Imaging Four Crown.
Valvoline Lap Leader Award: Ty Gibbs
When Gibbs found his way to the front of ARCA Menards Series races in 2020 — if he wasn’t already there thanks to his six General Tire Pole starts on the year — there was a good chance he would take the lead and keep it.
Gibbs won six of his 16 ARCA Menards Series starts this season and led in 11 races for a total of 969 laps, claiming the yearlong Valvoline Lap Leader award for leading the most laps in the series by a healthy margin.
Gibbs led the most laps eight times in 2020 at a variety of different tracks, ranging from the road course at Daytona to the egg-shaped oval of Worldwide Technology Raceway at Gateway in Madison, Illinois, to the high-banked half mile of Winchester Speedway in Winchester, Indiana.
Highlights included July’s Shore Lunch 150 at Iowa Speedway, where Gibbs started fifth but breezed to the lead in no time and led 140 of the 150 laps in a winning performance. He made his superspeedway debut at age 17 in the General Tire #AnywhereIsPossible 200 from Pocono Raceway and led 65 of the 80 laps on the Tricky Triangle. But Gibbs’ most dominating performance by far came at Winchester, where he led 199 of the 200 laps from the pole.
The 969 laps led by Gibbs is the highest single-season total for an ARCA Menards Series driver since Grant Enfinger led 1,075 laps in 2014. Just like Gibbs, Enfinger also won six races on his way to the Valvoline Lap Leader title that year.
General Tire Victory Bonus: Ty Gibbs
Gibbs won a series-high six races in ARCA Menards Series competition in 2020, one more than Sam Mayer’s five victories and enough to earn the rookie the seasonlong General Tire Victory Bonus award for the year.
And there’s a decent chance Gibbs would have won more races had he been able to run the full, 20-race ARCA Menards Series schedule rather than the 16 events in which he could compete based on his age.
Gibbs, who turned 18 in October, earned his first ARCA Menards Series win in just his second start, as he drove to Victory Lane in the fourth race of the AMS season, at Pocono Raceway in June. Gibbs led 65 of the 80 laps and left no doubt with his margin of victory over Chandler Smith a healthy 2.314 seconds.
Gibbs won again in his fourth ARCA Menards Series start when the series visited Kentucky Speedway a couple weeks later. He led a race-high 59 laps on his way to Victory Lane.
The grandson of Joe Gibbs and the son of his car owner Coy Gibbs, Ty Gibbs went back-to-back with a win at Iowa Speedway a week after his Kentucky victory. He led 140 of the 150 laps in a win that marked his third in just five ARCA Menards Series starts.
Gibbs returned to Victory Lane in the ARCA Menards Series in late August, when the series reached Worldwide Technology Raceway at Gateway in Madison, Illinois. He was dominant yet again, leading 109 of the 120 laps.
Gibbs’ last two wins of the ARCA Menards Series season came in consecutive races. He led all but one lap in the Sept. 19 race at Winchester Speedway in Winchester, Indiana. A week later, he won at Memphis International Raceway in Memphis, Tennessee.
General Tire Pole Award: Ty Gibbs
The ARCA Menards Series was plagued by unexpected turmoil and frequent changes over the course of the 2020 season, but there was at least one thing you could count on as a certainty: If Gibbs was in the field, he was going to be starting up front.
The 18-year-old ran 16 ARCA Menards Series races this season and started in the top five in all of them, including six races where he led the field to the green flag, the highest total for any driver in the series.
By virtue of his six poles, Gibbs claimed the seasonlong General Tire Pole Award for the 2020 ARCA Menards Series season.
Due to pandemic-related schedule upheaval and protocol changes, traditional General Tire Pole qualifying sessions set the lineup for only 10 races based on lap times. The other 10 events saw the lineup ordered by owners’ points according to the ARCA Menards Series rulebook.
But no matter what the circumstances, Gibbs remained a familiar presence near the front of the lineup.
Cometic Crew Chief Award: Mark McFarland
The 2020 ARCA Menards Series season marked a banner year for Joe Gibbs Racing. Drivers Ty Gibbs and Riley Herbst split time in the seat of the team’s No. 18 Monster Energy Toyota, wheeling the car to a combined seven AMS wins and the owners’ championship for car owner Coy Gibbs.
One of the most instrumental parts of the team’s success in 2020 was crew chief Mark McFarland in his second year calling the shots for the team from atop the pit box.
Based on the team’s outstanding performance in races as well as in qualifying sessions, McFarland won the Cometic Crew Chief of the Year award for the 2020 season.
The Cometic Crew Chief of the Year is an in-season awards race for full-time crew chiefs in the ARCA Menards Series. Points are determined each week by a sum of each team’s race result and, if General Tire Pole Qualifying is held, its qualifying result. The objective is to have the lowest cumulative point total at the end of the season.
McFarland finished the year with 110 points, giving him a solid cushion over his closest competitor, No. 25 Venturini Motorsports crew chief Kevin Reed with 149 points.
R.E. Lightning Challenge: Stacy Holmes
The magical 2020 ARCA Menards Season for Holmes and his family-owned Bret Holmes Racing team is sweet for all involved, including Stacy Holmes, Bret’s father and car owner.
Stacy Holmes won the 2020 R.E. Lightning Challenge by a healthy margin over David Gilliland, the owner of both the No. 4 and the No. 17 Fords in the ARCA Menards Series. Holmes’ No. 23 Chevy driven by his son picked up 788 points on the season, 54 more than Gilliland’s No. 4 and 87 more than Gilliland’s No. 17.
The R.E. Lightning Challenge award goes to the car owner who accumulates the most championship race points throughout the season. No bonus points are included in the tally. To be eligible to win the challenge, a team must use R.E.’s products and run its decal on the car.
Stacy Holmes won the R.E. Lightning Challenge in 2020 for the same reason Bret Holmes won the ARCA Menards Series championship. The team was the series’ most consistent all season, as the rest of the year-end awards listed below prove.
S&S Volvo Long Haul Award: Bret Holmes
An adage oft used in racing circles states that, “To finish first, you must first finish.” Any driver who wants a chance of lifting the ARCA Menards Series championship trophy at the end of a 20-race, eight-month season must limit the mistakes and ensure he or she is on the track to see the checkered flag each week.
Indeed, every series champion dating back to 2007 has ended his season with no more than two DNFs on his record, a trend that held up once again in 2020. The newly crowned champion Holmes finished 19 of the 20 races while running all but five laps throughout the year.
Turning the most circuits of any driver, Holmes headed the S&S Volvo Laps Completed standings this season, a significant factor in his rise as the 2020 ARCA Menards Series champion.
Holmes is now a two-time S&S Volvo Long Haul Award winner, having also set the series’ high mark for total laps completed in 2019. His second consecutive triumph in this category caps an impressive two-season stretch of consistency in which the 23-year-old has completed all but 14 laps across 40 ARCA Menards Series races with just a single premature exit.
General Tire Superspeedway Challenge: Stacy Holmes
After a layoff of more than two months, the General Tire Superspeedway Challenge concluded with the 2020 ARCA Menards Series season finale at Kansas Speedway. The Speediatrics 150 presented by The NASCAR Foundation marked the seventh and final superspeedway race of the season, as well as the second trip to Kansas in 2020.
The battle for the superspeedway crown remained tight all the way down to the last race, as just six points separated the top three teams — No. 18 car owner Coy Gibbs, No. 23 car owner Stacy Holmes and No. 25 car owner Cathy Venturini — going into the weekend.
When the checkered flag fell and the dust settled, Holmes was able to score not only the overall series championship but also the General Tire Superspeedway Challenge crown for his family-operated Bret Holmes Racing team.
The General Tire Superspeedway Challenge is a special series within the greater ARCA Menards Series overall championship. The challenge is comprised of races on the schedule at paved ovals greater than 1.5 miles in length.
Race points only count towards a team’s yearlong tally, with bonus points not counted towards this total. The General Tire Superspeedway Challenge is contested among car owners, rather than drivers, so that a team using multiple drivers has the same chances of winning as a team with a single full-time driver.
CGS Imaging Four Crown: Bret Holmes
Holmes defied the odds in 2020 by taking his family-operated Bret Holmes Racing team to the championship while fighting off multi-car teams with ties to NASCAR’s top three series. And the trophy he received after the season finale was not his first of the year.
With a third-place result on the dirt at the Springfield Mile in the series’ penultimate race, Holmes clinched the CGS Imaging Four Crown title, etching his name on the trophy for one of ARCA’s most prestigious in-season championships for the second year in a row.
Formerly known as the Bill France Four Crown, named in honor of the NASCAR founder and longtime ally of ARCA, drivers hopeful of winning the CGS Imaging Four Crown must showcase their driving talents at four diverse venues throughout the season. The rules are simple: The driver with the most cumulative race points over the four designated events takes the Four Crown. Bonus points for winning, leading laps, or starting from the General Tire Pole are not counted towards a driver’s Four Crown total.
The CGS Imaging Four Crown was first awarded in 1984, with the inaugural trophy going to the late Davey Allison in his rookie season in the ARCA Menards Series.
For the 2020 season, the CGS Imaging Four Crown would be contested at a superspeedway (Michigan International Speedway), a road course (the Daytona International Speedway road course), a short track (Memphis International Raceway) and a dirt track (the Springfield Mile at the Illinois State Fairgrounds). Due to pandemic-related schedule changes, the Four Crown would not kick off until the Aug. 9 running of the VizCom 200 at Michigan, kicking off the four-race chase for the title.
Contributing: Ryan Musialowski
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