Will Kimmel Racing News

Kimmel Racing has been hard at work for the upcoming 2017 ARCA Racing Series season which kicks off in two weeks at Daytona Int'l Speedway. Will Kimmel and his wife Erica are awaiting the birth of their first child, William James Kimmel IV, scheduled to be here the week of the race. In preparation for that, the team finished the Daytona car a few weeks ago and Ricky Sanders is scheduled to run the #69. "The Daytona car is just about ready as it sits right now," said Kimmel. "We have a few things to do, but not much. We anticipated this could happen and planned accordingly."

But that doesn't mean that things have been slow at the race shop. There is always something to do and there is always the next next race.

"We've been working hard on the Salem car for the last four days. We hadn't torn it down in a long time and we've found so much stuff wrong with it. I don't know how it got this way, but we're finally getting it back to where it should be."

Salem Speedway is considered by most, if not all, to be the home track for Kimmel Racing. Only an hour north of the race shop in the foothills of the Indiana countryside, Salem Speedway has hosted more ARCA races (100) than any other track in the series' storied history. In the last six years (excluding 2014, when Kimmel didn't run at Salem), he has tallied three Top-5's with a career best runner-up in the 2011 Fall race.

The 2016 season saw Kimmel finish 3rd in the Spring and a disappointing 18th in the Fall race after contact with the outside retaining wall coming out of Turn 4. "We haven't been where we wanted to be at Salem the last few seasons, and it's been frustrating. But this car we've been working on, it'll be ready." The team plans to go up and test as soon as the weather gets nice which will give them an idea of where the car is at compared to where they think it should be.

There is one race between Daytona and Salem; ARCA will run at the historic Nashville Fairgrounds three weeks before Salem. Kimmel Racing will be there with Nick Higdon running the #69. Next up for the team is the Lucas Oil Engine Treatment 200 Driven by General Tire at Daytona International Speedway. The first practice is at 4:00pm on Thursday, February 16th. Qualifying is 3:30pm on Friday, February 17th and the green flag drops Saturday, February 18th at 4:15pm EST.