Friday’s Portland 112 at Portland International Raceway for the ARCA Menards Series West is slated to feature five double-duty competitors who are also racing in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event at the 12-turn, 1.967-mile road course.
Cole Custer, Riley Herbst, Parker Retzlaff, Kyle Sieg and Dylan Lupton are the competitors set to join the ARCA Menards Series West field Friday, and all of them have roots that run through the ARCA platform.
Custer, the driver of the No. 00 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, began competing in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East in 2013. He won twice that season and added a third victory in 2014 along with his lone ARCA Menards Series West win, which came in the opener at Phoenix Raceway.
He’s also made six ARCA Menards Series starts, earning a victory at Pocono Raceway in 2015. This weekend, he’ll join High Point Racing to pilot the No. 55 alongside teammate Trevor Huddleston. It will be his eighth West Series start and first since 2019.
ARCA West at Portland:Â Entry list | Complete event schedule
Herbst, who pilots the No. 98 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing as a teammate to Custer in the Xfinity Series, returns to the ARCA platform after last competing in an ARCA event in 2021. His first start in what is now the ARCA Menards Series West came in 2016, when he ran the full series schedule and finished seventh in the standings.
He has two ARCA platform victories, both coming in the ARCA Menards Series. His first came in 2017 at Pocono Raceway, with his second coming in 2020 at Michigan International Speedway. He’ll drive the No. 5 Ford for team owner Jerry Pitts at Portland.
The driver of the No. 31 Chevrolet for Jordan Anderson Racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Retzlaff has extensive ARCA platform experience dating back to 2019. He raced at Memphis International Raceway and World Wide Technology Raceway that year before running the full East Series schedule in 2020, earning a best finish of fourth at North Carolina’s Southern National Motorsports Park.
He’s also made three ARCA Menards Series starts, earning a best finish of eighth in 2020 at Ohio’s Toledo Speedway. He’ll drive the No. 02 Chevrolet for Young’s Motorsports at Portland and again next weekend at Sonoma Raceway.
📢: @Parker79p will pilot the @ARCA_Racing No. 02 at Portland & Sonoma with support from @Ponsse & @pewag pic.twitter.com/5yb7W8oNHA
— Young's Motorsports (@youngsmtrsports) May 30, 2023
Sieg, who is in the midst of his first full Xfinity Series season for RSS Racing, got a lot of seat time by racing with the ARCA platform in 2020-21. He’s made starts across all three ARCA divisions, including 14 starts in the headlining ARCA Menards Series.
In those 14 starts, Sieg earned nine top-10 finishes, headlined by a fourth-place finish in the ARCA Menards Series and ARCA Menards Series West combination race at Phoenix Raceway in 2021. On Friday he’ll pilot the No. 46 Ford for Lowden-Jackson Motorsports.
Lupton is returning to not only the Xfinity Series, but also the ARCA Menards Series West. Lupton cut his teeth racing with the West Series, earning wins at Evergreen Speedway in 2013 and Kern County Raceway Park in 2014. He finished a career-best second in the West Series standings in 2014.
He last raced with the ARCA platform in 2021, finishing second in the West Series event at Sonoma Raceway. He’s scheduled to wheel the No. 24 Chevrolet on Friday in the Portland 112 before joining Alpha Prime Racing for his first Xfinity Series start of 2023 on Saturday.
Trio of debuts ahead at Portland
Three young drivers — Eric Johnson Jr., Roxali Kamper and Caleb Shrader — are scheduled to make their ARCA platform debuts this weekend at Portland.
Johnson and Shrader will be teammates at Bill McAnally Racing, while Kamper will drive the No. 39 for Tuttle-Kamper Racing.
Scheduled to drive the No. 19, Johnson makes his debut after working for Bill McAnally Racing as a mechanic and spotter in 2022. The driver from La Center, Washington also races Late Models during his spare time.
Shrader will make his West Series debut aboard the No. 99 for Bill McAnally Racing. From Tigard, Oregon, Shrader cut his teeth racing Karts on road courses before moving up to the Sports Car Club of America’s Spec Racer Ford category.
Kamper, 15, began racing at age 7 in Quarter Midgets and Karts. She later moved up to Legend cars, and in 2020, she captured the INEX Utah State championship in the Young Lions class. She’s from Saratoga Springs, Utah.
Championship chase resumes Friday
The battle for the championship is starting to come into focus three races into the 2023 ARCA Menards Series West season.
Despite being winless so far this year, Landen Lewis holds a five-point advantage in the West Series standings thanks to three consecutive runner-up finishes to start the season. The driver from Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina also has a runner-up finish in ARCA Menards Series East competition at Dover Motor Speedway this year.
Second in the standings belongs to Phoenix Raceway winner Tyler Reif. Finishes of first, third and sixth thus far has kept Reif in the thick of the title hunt.
Sean Hingorani is the hottest driver in West Series competition following consecutive victories at Irwindale Speedway and Kern County Raceway Park. He sits nine points out of the championship lead and would likely be the championship leader were it not for mechanical gremlins in the opening race of the year at Phoenix.
Trevor Huddleston, in his first full season since 2021, finds himself fourth in the standings and 12 points behind Lewis. He has finishes of ninth, fourth and third thus far in 2023.
Rounding out the top five is Bradley Erickson, who is 15 points behind Lewis early in the year. His finishes of third, eighth and fifth have kept him right in the thick of the championship chase.
NOTES:
- After making his West Series debut last year at Portland, Davey Magras is back for his second series start this weekend. He started 11th and finished seventh in September.
- Another driver making his return to West Series action is Ryan Philpott, who makes his first start of the season Friday at Portland. He’s made 37 West Series starts during his career, earning nine top-10 finishes. Two of those runs came at Portland in 2011 and 2022.
- No previous Portland winners are entered in Friday’s race. In the eight races run at the track, seven different drivers have found Victory Lane. Jake Drew, who swept a pair of races at the track last year, is the only repeat winner in series history at the venue.
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