Sheldon Creed Caps 2018 ARCA Season with Kansas Win

Creed (No. 28 United Rentals Toyota) was leading on lap 46 when he was involved in an incident with a lapped car. Creed’s car was damaged on the driver’s side, but quick work by crew chief Jeff Stankiewicz and the MDM Motorsports crew kept him on the lead lap and in contention.

Several late race cautions kept the field bunched, and Creed was able to pick up positions on restarts and on the short bursts of green flag racing.

Creed took the lead from defending race winner Michael Self (No. 15 Sinclair Lubricants Toyota) on a lap 86 restart, and held off Harrison Burton (No. 12 DEX Imaging Toyota) after a final restart with a handful of laps remaining.

“The car seemed to drive the same after the crash as it did before,” Creed said. “I don’t know that I can put all of the blame on that lapped car. I was coming up on him pretty fast and I don’t think he knew I was going to be out there. The team did a great job patching it up as quickly as they could.”

Burton fought to second despite an engine problem that kept the RPMs at 5000 while under caution.

“The throttle was sticking and holding the RPMs at 5000 under yellow, and it made it really challenging on restarts,” Burton said.

Self held on for third despite losing a lot of track position in the final laps. Self was nearly collected in a couple of incidents throughout the night but was still a factor for the win late in the going.

“What I saw was just hard racing out there,” Self said. “There were some close calls for us but we managed to make it through and were still up battling for the win. It’s great that we were in a position to win twenty percent of the races we were entered in this year. We’d like to come back and do more of it next year.”

The event was slowed eight times for various incidents, including one that involved series runner-up Zane Smith (No. 41 LaPaz Margarita Mix/ICON Vehicle Dynamics Toyota). He crashed in turn three along with Gus Dean (No. 32 GREE Cooling Products/Baker Distributing Chevrolet) with 22 laps remaining. Smith unofficially finished 17th while Dean was unofficially 18th. Neither driver was injured.

Travis Braden (No. 27 MatrixCare/Consonus Healthcare Ford) was also involved in a crash in turn one with Joe Graf, Jr. (No. 77 Big Tine Ford). Both were evaluated and released from the infield care center.

Drew Herring made his first series start in nine years and started from the General Tire Pole, but was involved in a spin on lap 64. He was credited with eighth at the finish.

There were seven lead changes among six drivers. The average speed was 90.812 miles per hour, and the time of race was one hour, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds. Creed’s margin of victory was 0.942 seconds.

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards season is now complete. The 2019 schedule should be released in the coming weeks, while the series awards banquet is scheduled for December 8 in Indianapolis, Indiana.