Photo – Kyle Magda
The ARCA Racing Series stays in the Northeast this weekend, traveling from New Jersey Motorsports Park to Pocono Raceway.
The teams will tackle the Tricky Triangle on Saturday for the 58th time in ARCA history.
Looking at the entry list, the name that sticks out the most is Sprint Cup rookie Kyle Larson, who will drive an entry for Turner Scott Motorsports to gain extra track time for Sunday’s race.
The No. 4 car tested at Pocono on Wednesday, but Camping World Truck Series rookie Ben Kennedy shook the car down. Kennedy never turned any laps around Pocono until Wednesday.
Venturini Motorsports driver Justin Boston will look to keep up his momentum, coming off from his first win at Toledo Speedway last month and a strong run at NJMP last week until a cut tire late in the race. The second-year driver talked about looking forward to Saturday’s race.
“Getting to race this brand new ZLOOP Camry,” Boston said. “It’s really good. We had a couple things we had to work through today, but it’s really fast overall.”
Unusual things seem to happen at Pocono, as the second-year driver ran into some lead off the Tunnel Turn in the test.
Venturini Motorsports brought the same car Erik Jones ran last year at Pocono for Boston.
One of Boston’s mentors, Brennan Poole, also helped out with the Venturini drivers at the Pocono ARCA test Wednesday, giving advice to him and rookie Cody Coughlin.
Frank Kimmel hasn’t won at the Tricky Triangle since July 2006, but finished third and second in both races last year.
Cunningham Motorsports driver Tom Hessert also has run well at Pocono while having a best finish of fourth-place, three times, most recently last June.
His rookie teammate Austin Wayne Self posted the second fastest time in Wednesday’s test.
A nice surprise atop the leaderboard during the test was Will Kimmel, who found some speed and led most of the afternoon session.
“The biggest thing is we run the older style 452 Fords and we own all our own motors,” Kimmel said. “ARCA’s been good enough to open the rules up for us and they’ve try to equal us up with the FR9’s and R07’s . “I think it’s really paid off today and we worked on the front end of the Ingersoll Rand-Messina Ford.”
Kimmel will make a start in the No.69 Ford this weekend, his first since Talladega in May. Saturday will be his eighth start at the track.
“I think all that, and a combination with adding and me, I think that it’s all come together for us today, and really really happy with it.”
The Pocono ARCA 200 will air live on Saturday at 1 p.m. on FOX Sports 1 and ARCAracing.com will offer live timing and scoring.