Track profile: New Smyrna Speedway

Per tradition, the 2022 ARCA Menards Series season begins at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday, Feb. 19.

The green flag for the 2022 ARCA Menards racing platform, though, waves 12 miles south of Daytona and several days earlier with the Race to Stop Suicide 200 presented by Place of Hope at New Smyrna Speedway on Tuesday, Feb. 15.

PHOTOS: ARCA Menards Racing at New Smyrna

The ARCA Menards Series East opener in 2022 once again takes place at the half-mile oval in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, marking the ninth straight year the high-banked short track has hosted the first race of the East Series season. The event is scheduled as part of Night 5 of the track’s annual World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing.

Below is everything to know about the track that has hosted the East Series opener every year since 2014.

Track Profile: New Smyrna Speedway

Clyde Hart and his family opened New Smyrna Speedway, titled Daytona Raceway at the time, as a dirt track in 1967. Six months later, the track surface was paved for the sake of competitive racing.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Renamed with the surface update, New Smyrna Speedway has hosted the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing — now a nine-night series of racing featuring late models, tour modifieds, the ARCA Menards Series East and more — every year since it was paved. The tradition takes place each year during Daytona Speedweeks.

Apart from its World Series, New Smyrna Speedway hosts weekly grass roots racing on Saturday nights from March through mid-November as part of the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series. The venue also features a handful of special events on its schedule.

New Smyrna Speedway has been a staple on the East Series schedule since it was added as the season-opener for the 2014 season. Todd Gilliland, who won the East races at New Smyrna in 2016 and 2018, respectively, is the only driver who has scored multiple victories at the track in the series.

Max Gutiérrez won last year’s East Series race at New Smyrna in dramatic fashion with a three-wide pass for the victory on the final stretch.

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ARCA Menards Series Results at New Smyrna Speedway