Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway
(Photo: Austin Anthony/ARCA Racing)

News and Notes: Music City 150 at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway

www.arcaracing.com May 1, 2025

After competing in their first race at Rockingham Speedway since 2012, the ARCA Menards Series East heads to another historic facility in Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway for Saturday’s Music City 150.

Built in 1958, Nashville boasts a proud history of racing that includes hosting NASCAR Cup Series events up until the 1980s. The ARCA Menards Series has also frequented the half-mile oval, having primarily raced at Nashville during the 1960s and 1970s before making infrequent appearances in 1992 and across the late 2010s.

Now a staple of the ARCA Menards Series East calendar, Nashville welcomes a new generation of competitors on Saturday, all of whom seek to write their own chapter in the track’s record books. Below are some of the storylines ahead of the Music City 150:

  • The ARCA Menards Series East heads to Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway for the third race of the 2025 season, Saturday’s Music City 150. It will be the seventh time the East series has raced at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway since 2007.
  • Previous East winners at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway include Rogelio Lopez (2007), Matt Kobyluck (2008), Sammy Smith (2021, 2022), Luke Fenhaus (2023), and William Sawalich (2024).
  • Joe Gibbs Racing will look to continue its dominance of both Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway and the 2025 ARCA Menards Series East season with 15-year-old Max Reaves (No. 18 Cook Out Toyota) back at the wheel for the first time since the season opener at Five Flags Speedway. Reaves started from the General Tire Pole and led 92 laps en route to the victory in his first career series start. At the second race of the season, two weeks ago at Rockingham Speedway, JGR drivers Brent Crews and William Sawalich combined to lead every lap with pole winner Crews winning and two-time East champion Sawalich in second. The JGR No. 18 team has won three of the four most recent East races at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway with both Sammy Smith – once while the team was listed as Kyle Busch Motorsports – and Sawalich driving and only lost the fourth on a last-lap pass
  • How dominant has the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 team been at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway? The team’s average finish is 1.25 over the last four races at the track, its average start is 1.75, and the team has led 606 of a possible 755 laps.
  • Isaac Kitzmiller (No. 79 A.L.L. Construction Chevrolet) leads the ARCA Menards Series East standings into the Music City 150. Kitzmiller, the 16-year-old son of ARCA Menards Series championship contender Jason Kitzmiller, started the season with a fifth-place finish at Five Flags Speedway and a sixth-place finish at the most recent series race at Rockingham Speedway.
  • Kole Raz (No. 76 Cyclum Nextgen Travel Centers Ford) is second in the series standings, three points behind Kitzmiller. Raz, who won an ARCA Menards Series West race at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway last year, finished second in the season opener at Five Flags Speedway and seventh at Rockingham.
  • Tyler Reif (No. 23 Sigma Performance Services Chevrolet) enters the Music City 150 third in the series standings. Reif, who won twice last year en route to the ARCA Menards Series West owner’s championship for Central Coast Racing, finished third at Five Flags but we relegated to 17th at Rockingham after a mid-race brush with the wall.
  • Zachary Tinkle (No. 11 Racing for Rescues / Fast Track High Performance Racing Toyota) is fourth in the series standings, exactly where he has finished in the standings in each of the last two seasons. Tinkle finished tenth at Five Flags and eleventh at Rockingham; he finished a career-best fourth at Nashville in 2024.
  • William Sawalich holds the ARCA Menards Series East track qualifying record at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, set in 2023, at 19.414 seconds/110.512 mph.
  • Sammy Smith holds the the ARCA Menards Series East track race record at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, set in 2021, at 91.438 miles per hour.
  • The Music City 150 will be streamed live on FloRacing on Saturday starting at 9:30 pm ET / 8:30 pm CT. Live timing and scoring data from all on-track activity and live race audio is available at ARCARacing.com. Follow @ARCARacing on X (formerly Twitter) for up-to-the-minute updates and information.