Catchfence

(JOLIET, Ill.) – After devoting the month of May to two short track races and the season’s lone road course event, the ARCA Racing Series will return on Saturday, June 4 to the high intensity of speedway racing in the Messina Wildlife Animal Stopper 150 at Chicagoland Speedway.

The 100-lap, 150-mile Messina Wildlife Animal Stopper 150 – the sixth of 19 races this season – is scheduled for 5 p.m. Central on June 4, with live timing and scoring presented by ARCA Nation at ARCARacing.com. SPEED will air a tape-delayed broadcast of the race the same evening, at 11 p.m. Eastern.

The race is the third speedway race of the year, following Bobby Gerhart’s win at Daytona in February and Ty Dillon’s victory at Talladega in April. The event kicks off a string of three consecutive speedway events (Pocono, June 11; Michigan, June 17), which will play a significant role in the 2011 Hoosier Tire Superspeedway Challenge. The Challenge consists of seven races (Daytona, Talladega, Chicagoland, Pocono, Michigan, Pocono, Kansas). 2010 ARCA Racing Series champion Patrick Sheltra won the Challenge last season.

In ten races since the track’s opening in 2001, 10 different drivers have won, and 10 different drivers have qualified on the pole. Four of the 10 race wins have come from the pole. Nine-time series champion Frank Kimmel won from the first starting position in 2003; former series competitors Chad Blount (2002), Steve Wallace (2006), and Michael McDowell (2007) also won from the pole. In the last two seasons, eventual series champions Justin Lofton (2009) and Sheltra (2010) won at Chicagoland.

After five races in 2011, Dillon (No. 41 Richard Childress Racing Development Chevrolet) may appear the primary favorite on the 1.5-mile oval. Dillon, an ARCA rookie with four wins in eight career starts, won at the similar Kansas Speedway last fall and finished with the top time of 30.195 seconds (178.838 mph) to lead a list of 15 drivers who tested at Chicagoland on May 17.

Dillon has won the Menards Pole Award presented by Ansell three times this season. In addition to his win at Talladega, he won at Toledo Speedway on May 15. A grandson of Richard Childress, Dillon leads the ARCA point standings by 90 points over Frank Kimmel (No. 44 Ansell/Menards Ford).

In addition to his 2003 win at Chicagoland, Kimmel has four other top-fives and seven other top-10s at the track, including a fourth-place finish last year. The highest returning finisher from 2010 is Grant Enfinger (No. 36 Hoosier Tire Midwest/RaceTires.com Dodge), who was third after finishing second in his only other Chicagoland race (2009).

Enfinger is currently fourth in points and in the midst of what he hopes is his first full ARCA Racing Series season, driving a car from Springfield, Ill.-based Allgaier Motorsports. The family team fielded the 2008 championship car for Justin Allgaier, who is now a NASCAR Nationwide Series driver for Turner Motorsports.

“We’re going as far as (team owner) Mike Allgaier wants to go,” Enfinger said. “We’ve been trying to find a little bit of help along the way to keep him motivated and keep everybody pumped up. I think staying up there in the points would help that as well. If we can just stay up there toward the front and have a shot at it, and have some guys help us along the way, I think we’ll keep it going for a while.”

The Messina Wildlife Animal Stopper 150 sponsorship is part of a comprehensive marketing program that includes not only an Official Company sponsorship with ARCA, but also a special award sponsorship with the Messina Halfway Leader Challenge. Teams leading at the advertised halfway point of a race will earn a $500 cash bonus for that event, provided the Messina logo is properly displayed on the team’s car and uniforms. The partnership between Messina and ARCA also includes opportunities for Messina guests and customers to attend race events.

“We are thrilled to bring our name to Chicagoland Speedway and to the thousands of race fans in the Chicago market as we continue to raise our brand awareness,” said James Messina, vice president of Messina Wildlife Management. “We’ve seen a tremendous response from the racing community as they’ve gotten to know the Messina Wildlife brand over the past year, and we’re excited to use this event to let fans in Chicago and around the country know that safe, effective and pleasant to use products are out there to help them stop animal damage.”

Started in 2001 after 13 years of research and development, Messina Wildlife Management has become a nationally recognized brand of organic animal repellents for a variety of domestic and wildlife pests under the brand name Messina Wildlife’s Animal Stoppers, including Deer Stopper®, Cat Stopper®, Dog StopperTM, Rabbit Stopper®, and others. Messina Wildlife’s Animal Stoppers can be found nationwide at thousands of independent retailers, including Menards, or online at MessinaWildlife.com.

Messina Wildlife’s Animal Stopper line of products features repellents that are pleasant to use, and dry clear and odor-free, while remaining rain fast for 30 days. Safe for the environment, humans, pets, and animals, these products encourage harmony with wildlife.

Messina’s motorsports involvement and partnership with ARCA began in 2009 when the company joined a business-to-business vendor program with series presenting sponsor Menards, allowing Messina the opportunity to sell products through more than 250 Menards Home Improvement locations nationwide.

Practice begins at 2:30 p.m. Central (3:30 Eastern) on Thursday, June 3, with Menards Pole Qualifying presented by Ansell taking place Friday at 1:30 p.m. Central (2:30 Eastern) before the 5 p.m. race. Live audio coverage and live timing and scoring of all events will be available at ARCARacing.com.

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards features 19 events at 16 tracks on its 2011 schedule. The series has crowned an ARCA national champion each year since its inaugural season in 1953, and has toured over 200 race tracks in 28 states since its inception. The series tests the abilities of drivers and race teams over the most diverse schedule of stock car racing events in the world, annually visiting tracks ranging from 0.4 mile to 2.66 miles in length, on both paved and dirt surfaces as well as a left- and right-turn road course.

Founded by John Marcum in 1953 in Toledo, Ohio, the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) is recognized among the leading sanctioning bodies in the country. Closing in on completing its sixth decade after hundreds of thousands of miles of racing, ARCA administers over 100 race events each season in two professional touring series and local weekly events.

- Automobile Racing Club of America Press Release