The 2012 season finale will take place on Friday, October 19. Continuing its history of racing alongside NASCAR’s three premier touring divisions, the ARCA finale will lead into a NASCAR Nationwide Series race and a Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup event at the track that weekend.
“To be able to host the 2012 ARCA Racing Series finale is a great honor and extremely exciting,” said Kansas Speedway president Patrick Warren. “We have seen a lot of great ARCA races at Kansas Speedway, including this year’s Kansas Lottery 98.9 under the lights, and I’m confident that next year’s event will be just as good. ARCA selecting Kansas Speedway to host the season finale is also a testament to our fans and the support they have shown for both the series and Kansas Speedway.”
Likewise, ARCA will race with NASCAR’s national divisions at Michigan International Speedway in June and Chicagoland Speedway in July.
Michigan will host the RainEater Wiper Blades 200 on Friday, June 15, just before Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series events on the two-mile oval. Chicagoland will welcome ARCA on Saturday, July 21, the same day as a Camping World Truck Series race and one day before a Nationwide Series race.
The Michigan race will be ARCA’s 31st since 1980, and the Chicagoland event will be the 12th for ARCA since 2001. After 11 prior races at the Joliet, Ill. track, the 2012 event will be ARCA’s first in July.
“These are impressive facilities in important markets for our series and partners, and serve as a tie to the long relationship between ARCA and International Speedway Corporation, which dates back to ARCA’s first race at Daytona in 1964,” said ARCA president Ron Drager. “Our teams see these events as true showcase opportunities on high-visibility race weekends.”
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
June 9 – Pocono Raceway
June 15 – Michigan International Speedway
July 1 – New Jersey Motorsports Park
July 21 – Chicagoland Speedway
August 4 – Pocono Raceway
August 19 – Illinois State Fairgrounds
September 3 – DuQuoin State Fairgrounds
October 19 – Kansas Speedway
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
