ARCA Menards Series West Star Nursery 150 Results

The ARCA Menards Series West held its seventh race of the season Thursday night from The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The track is a 3/8-mile banked asphalt oval.

Sunrise Ford Racing’s Jake Drew won the pole Thursday evening over Taylor Gray, who won a couple of weeks ago at Portland International Raceway. He was looking for his second straight win.

Jake Drew led the first 22 laps before Taylor Gray passed him for the lead. Taylor Gray fought off Jake Drew on three restarts, leading 43 laps before losing the lead to Jesse Love. Midway through the race, the lead was between Jesse Love and Taylor Gray. Jesse Love’s car encountered a problem and fell back to eighth place while Taylor Gray took the lead.

On the sixth caution, Jesse Love made a pit stop. On the final restart on lap 121, Taylor Gray pulled away from Jake Drew and led 123 of 150 laps on his way to his second straight win by 2.262 seconds over Jake Drew. It was Gray’s third career ARCA West win.

During the post-race celebration, despite winning, Taylor Gray was not satisfied. “It’s easy to get worked up at these short tracks. I overdrive the entry and made mistakes. I didn’t do that great of a job tonight, honestly making mistakes, and I should’ve had better restarts. In my opinion, I should’ve won this race by a lot more, but I just got to work on myself and keep studying and get better.”  

The second-place finisher, Jake Drew, while he wanted his first, was ok with second. “Didn’t quite get it done, but second’s cool. Closed a gap quite a bit on Jesse. He had an unfortunate night; I wish he was up there battling with us. But once again, my guys worked super hard all night, and I had a really good race car.” Drew added, “Just those last couple of laps, I made too many mistakes. Which is unfortunate, but I’ll take that. I’ll learn from it. We’ve got two more rounds to go, and we’ll keep trying to fight for those points. I really just want one of those wins.”

Jesse Love’s points lead is now down to seven over Jake Drew with two races left in the season.

The rest of the top ten finishers were Trevor Huddleston third, Joey Iest fourth, Kyle Keller fifth, Cole Moore sixth, Paul Pedroncelli Jr. seventh, Takuma Koga eight, Josh Fanopoulos ninth, and Christian Rose tenth.

The race featured seven cautions that included a three-wide battle on lap 114 when Jake Drew, Paul Pedroncelli Jr., and Dean Thompson were fighting for third place. Pedroncelli’s car hit the left rear of Dean Thompson’s car, resulting in a cut left rear tire.

The ARCA Menards Series West will return in a couple of weeks at All American Speedway in Roseville, CA. The race takes place on Saturday, October 9^th, at 10 pm on NBC Sports Gold Track Pass.