Catchfence

(TOLEDO, Ohio) – Despite all of Joey Coulter’s experience in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards in recent seasons, as well as his part-time role in the series while handling a full NASCAR Camping World Truck Series ride this year, the 21-year-old from Miami Springs, Fla. has never performed a double duty weekend.

Enter the upcoming Kroger SpeedFest at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis, and specifically, the events of Thursday, July 28 and Friday, July 29.

Coulter will first drive his No. 16 Rip It Energy Fuel / Darrell Gwynn Foundation Chevrolet in Thursday’s Ansell Protective Gloves 200, the first appearance for ARCA at the 0.686-mile oval since 1985. The next night, he’ll strap into his Richard Childress Racing truck for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series’ annual visit to the historic short track. The ARCA graduate has six top-10 finishes in 11 NASCAR starts, but has truly come on lately, scoring three top-fives and five top-10s in just his last six races.

He recently visited Lucas Oil Raceway and spoke about his impending double dip in his familiar Coulter stock car and his Childress truck.

“This is actually going to be my first double duty ever,” Coulter said. “I don’t think I’ve ever run back to back. I’m real excited. It’s going to be a blast. As much fun as I had just testing there, I can’t wait to run the ARCA race and then go sleep off the run we had there and wake up the next day and go do it again.”

This season in ARCA, Coulter has three starts, with the highlight a seventh-place finish at Michigan after leading four laps. Coulter tested Lucas Oil Raceway in his family team’s No. 16 Chevrolet, overcoming some minor issues in the turns and learning exactly what the flat oval had in store.

“We had a great test,” he said. “If you rated the test on a scale of 1 to 10, we had a 10. We got a lot of stuff figured out. We have a new crew chief, Jon Wolfe, who was (ARCA champion) Patrick Sheltra’s crew chief last year, so he knows his stuff. We hired him right before Michigan (on June 17), and he and I worked well together. The communication was awesome. We did a lot of stuff with shocks, trying to work on those while we were there. The biggest problem we fought all day was getting forward drive and not spinning the tires off the corner. At the end of the day, we were able to overcome that and put down a pretty fast lap.”

Simply getting a feel for the race track was helpful for Coulter as he prepares for nearly 275 total miles between the two races. When talking about seeing the track for the first time and what he noticed upon first glance, one characteristic stuck out: Lucas Oil Raceway’s relative lack of banking.

“(The track) was really cool,” he said. “There were a lot of things I was kind of surprised to see, and then there were a few things that I was excited to be there for. I was really surprised to see how flat it was. I knew it was pretty flat; you can see that it’s flat on TV, but once you get out there, it is pretty much flat. There’s a little bit of banking at the top of both corners, but nothing to really write home about. Other than that, it’s flat. There’s a lot of character to it. There are a couple bumps, things that really make you work on your shock package a lot. It was a fun track. I enjoyed every minute of it. I can’t wait for the race.”

The Ansell Protective Gloves 200 will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 28, and air on SPEED one hour later, at 8 p.m. ARCARacing.com will feature live timing and scoring coverage of all on-track ARCA events throughout the day, including practice from 1:30-3 and Menards Pole Qualifying presented by Ansell at 4:30.

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards will join the USAC Midget Series and USAC Silver Crown Series at the track. The events comprise the first day of Kroger SpeedFest, which also includes NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series racing over a three-day period.

The race will be the 12th of 19 in the 2011 ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards season, and the first at Lucas Oil Raceway since Bob Schacht won in 1985.

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