Tony Cosentino ready to face the challenge of first full ARCA Menards Series season

Last year, Tony Cosentino didn’t know what his future in racing looked like.

The then 33-year-old native of Mansfield, Ohio, had dipped his toes into the ARCA Menards Series, starting 10 races with Andy Hillenburg’s Fast Track High Performance Racing Team, usually starting the race, and then running to the first scheduled pit stop before pulling behind the wall and calling it a day.

The one race where Cosentino ran to the finish, at Indiana’s Winchester Speedway, resulted in a 10th-place finish.

Cosentino would get another shot in 2022, this time at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He worked the phones and leveraged relationships and favors and scraped together the funding to run the whole race. He ran a clean race, giving the faster cars the racing line and stayed out of trouble – everything a young driver looking to gain respect on the race track needs to do – on his way to ninth at the finish, a new career-best.

But that was his only chance to race in 2022. He made a couple more starts, but was forced to pull off early each time.

But those two top-10 finishes left him with the burning desire and knowledge that he could compete at the front of the field in the ARCA Menards Series if given the right opportunity.

He looked at the landscape and saw that the chances of someone calling and asking him to drive their race car were slim and getting slimmer by the day. So instead of waiting for the opportunity to present itself, he created the opportunity.

“I have been talking with E.J. Tomayo about doing something like this since his son Enrique started racing late models with me,” he said. “We started looking at things closely at the end of last year, looking at budgets and what we needed to do to get up and running. Enrique is a pretty good race car driver, but he also wants to go to school to be a mechanical engineer. This also creates a future for him too.”

The new team quickly assembled a fleet of race cars with the goal of getting on track for the season opener at Daytona.

“We got some cars from Niece, we have a car from Bill Kimmel, and we have a car from DGR,” he said. “Our plan is to run the full season and to do it the best we can.”

The new team faced a herculean task of making it through a tough inspection process at Daytona for the season opener.

“It’s really stressful to get through inspection as a new team,” he said. “We were learning all the people and processes we need to know and still making sure the car was right. And then just before qualifying we had a radiator go out, so we needed to find one and get it changed. We were able to get one from Eric Caudell’s team and made it out in time.”

That wouldn’t be it for the drama Cosentino would face throughout the weekend.

“We got spun on lap two, and all I could think about was ‘really, that’s how this weekend is going to go,’” he said. “But the car wasn’t damaged, so we just stayed focused and patient. I wasn’t too nervous. I knew we’d have some opportunities to get our laps back and that’s how it played out. We got back on the lead lap, and we were in a pretty good position at the end and came home 15th and the car is in one piece.”

The solid debut weekend for the new Tomayo Cosentino Racing team gave its driver a boost of confidence headed into the rest of the 20-race ARCA Menards Series season.

“When I was driving late models and even doing the start-and-park thing, I knew I could race but I didn’t really know if I could be competitive,” he said. “A weekend like we had in Daytona lets me know I can, and that it’s worth pushing forward. Our goals are to be racing for top 10s, and then top fives, and then to be in the hunt to win. One thing at a time.”

Cosentino is used to setting goals and achieving them. He achieved the first by just being at Daytona.