Michael Self celebrates after winning Sunday’s ARCA Menards Series race on the one mile dirt track at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Photo: ARCA Media

Michael Self held off his Venturini Motorsports teammate Christian Eckes in a two-lap dash to the checkered flag to win Sunday’s ARCA Menards Series race on the one-mile Illinois State Fairgrounds dirt track.

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Sam Mayer used a late-race pass around Ty Gibbs to capture the Skip’s Western Outfitters 175, which was the ARCA Menards Series East opener, at New Smyrna Speedway Monday night.Mayer, who is the. Even in this age of grossly inflated MC scores arca is still below an 80 right now let me stream, haven't listened since the leak but I don't remember it being nearly as good as ha self titled.

Self, the current series championship leader, took the lead from Logan Seavey shortly after the halfway point of the race. From there, he built a nearly four-second advantage over the field until an incident in turn four involving Ty Gibbs and Joe Graf, Jr. with less than ten laps to go.

The race would get restarted at the scheduled conclusion, lap 100, for a green-white-checkered dash to the checkered.

Self got the break on the restart and battled side-by-side with rookie Corey Heim, but the two made contact in turns three and four. Self dashed to the lead while Heim dropped through the field allowing Eckes to move into second.

“I did not want to see that last yellow,” Self said after scoring his fourth series win of the season. “I was really nervous about it. I knew we had to get a great restart. It was pretty wild going off into turns one and two.”

For his part, Heim was disappointed but he knew what to expect going into the final couple of laps.

“We just got pushed up into the loose dirt in turns three and four,” he said. “If I was in that position that’s what I would have done too. It sucks we lost all those positions. We stayed patient all day and worked the bottom groove and did what we needed to do. It’s disappointing to end up seventh after the day we had.”

Eckes was happy to come across the line in second knowing he could have given up a lot more ground to Self in the series championship battle.

“We’re happy with second but we needed more than that today,” Eckes said. “We were fourth before that last restart so it could have been worse than that. It’s just a shame we gave up everything we picked up at Pocono.”

Bret Holmes finished third, with Seavey fourth, and Will Kimmel fifth.

Arcadia Ap Scores

Self continues to lead the ARCA Menards Series championship standings with an unofficial 105-point lead over Eckes headed into the Southern Illinois 100 at DuQuoin on August 31.

The race was slowed just four times by cautions. The first was for a crash involving Eric Caudell on the opening lap. The second yellow of the day was on lap 10 for rain, which forced a 12-minute delay while the track crew worked the dirt surface of the track. The third yellow of the afternoon waved on lap 27 for a spin involving Tim Richmond, and the final yellow for the spin involving Gibbs and Graf waved on lap 94.

Scores Arkansas

Self’s winning average speed was 76.917 miles per hour. His margin of victory over Eckes was 0.363 seconds.

The next race for the ARCA Menards Series is the Southern Illinois 100 on Saturday night August 31.

ARCA Menards Series
Illinois State Fairgrounds – Springfield, IL
Allen Crowe 100 – August 18, 2019 at

High Scores Arcade

1. Michael Self
2. Christian Eckes
3. Bret Holmes
4. Logan Seavey
5. Will Kimmel
6. Kelly Kovski
7. Corey Heim
8. Carson Hocevar
9. Ryan Unzicker
10. Joe Graf, Jr.
11. Travis Braden
12. Dick Doheny
13. Tim Richmond
14. Bobby Gerhart
15. Ty Gibbs
16. Brad Smith
17. Dale Shearer
18. Mike Basham
19. Tommy Vigh, Jr.
20. Eric Caudell
21. Wayne Peterson