Catchfence

(TOLEDO, Ohio) - The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards will continue a long tradition of opening its season at the world-renowned Daytona International Speedway.

The Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 will set the tone for 2012 from the historic 2.5-mile superspeedway oval at 4 p.m. on Saturday, February 18. The race will air live on SPEED.

The race will be the 49th for ARCA at Daytona, which has hosted the series’ season opener every year since ARCA’s first visit in 1964. The race will also open ARCA’s 60th Anniversary Season, and will precede Saturday night’s feature race, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Budweiser Shootout. Those events will lead into pole qualifying for the Daytona 500 the next day.

Bobby Gerhart has won a record seven times at Daytona, including a victory over 2011 Rookie of the Year Chris Buescher this February.

“We race on the same day, at the same track, just a couple of hours before the Bud Shootout, and a week in advance of the season-opening Daytona 500,” said Ron Drager, president of ARCA. “It’s a great opportunity for us, and a great platform at a track where so much of our history has been written.”

On-track activity will begin with practice Thursday, February 16 and continue with Menards Pole Qualifying presented by Ansell on Friday, February 17. Start times will be announced shortly.

ARCA officials also announced today that the season’s second superspeedway event will take place Friday, May 4 at Talladega Superspeedway, leading off a weekend of NASCAR Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup Series action.

“These race tracks are great facilities in important racing markets, and speak to the long-standing relationship between ARCA and the International Speedway Corporation tracks, which dates back to ARCA’s first race at Daytona in 1964,” Drager said. “This is a real opportunity for our teams and drivers to be on track during the high-visibility ISC race weekends.”

The 2012 race at Talladega will be the 50th since 1969. Grant Adcox is ARCA’s all-time leading winner on the 2.66-mile superspeedway oval with five wins, but 2011 series champion Ty Dillon is the most recent ARCA winner at Talladega. Dillon passed nine-time ARCA champion Frank Kimmel just before the checkered flag to win this April.

More detailed schedule information for the season will be available shortly. The following race dates for the 2012 ARCA Racing Series schedule have been announced:

February 18 – Daytona International Speedway

March 10 – Mobile International Speedway

May 4 – Talladega Superspeedway

July 1 – New Jersey Motorsports Park

The ARCA Racing Series will wrap up the 2011 season with the Championship Awards Banquet at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, Ky., near Cincinnati, on Saturday, December 10.

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards featured 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. In 2011, the series has tested the abilities of drivers and race teams over the most diverse schedule of stock car racing events in the world, 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