The 20-year-old Holmdel racer put the A.Casola Farms Ford, prepared by Andy Belmont Motorsports, in front of the pack for 11 laps and spent much of the race running with the leaders in the top five.
Casola had started the race in sixth spot as a result of a 33.831 seconds trip around the 1.25-mile semi-banked oval for a speed of 133.014 mph. The former Wall Township, NJ Speedway truck racer was sort of the “guinea pig” for all the racers as he, through the luck of the draw, got to qualify first of the more than 40 cars on hand. He picked up one and one-half seconds between practice and qualifying on a track that he had only raced on before via video games.
“I really think I could have had a second place finish in that race,” said the ARCA rookie. “Andy and the crew had really given me a great car. We had a great pit stop. This is the same car we raced at Pocono and got an eighth place finish. Unfortunately in the closing laps I got caught on the outside and almost got shoved into the wall in turn one.
“I have the huge wheel mark on the side of the A.Casola Farms Ford to show for that battle. Once I got pushed into the loose stuff it took a lap or so to get the tires clean and by then I was back in fifth.”
Casola pointed out that he thought Gateway was a fun track. It reminded him of Pocono because of the shifting that was involved.
“Overall everyone was well satisfied with the effort at Gateway,” Casola said. “Hopefully we can carry that momentum on to DuQuoin and have a strong finish…….maybe a win.”
On Labor Day Monday, September 3rd Casola gets his second chance at dirt track racing with the ARCA RE/MAX Series. Coming off an impressive 13th place finish on the dirt at Springfield, Illinois back on August 19th Casola heads to DuQuoin, Illinois for the 55th annual Southern Illinois 100 at the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds. This event will kick off the Bill France Triple Crown, representative of the series’ diverse schedule, which is a separate title within a title that showcases the tour on three very diverse tracks - a dirt track, a short-track and a super speedway.
The Triple Crown will include events at DuQuoin, Salem, Indiana Speedway
and Talladega Superspeedway.
Practice for the ARCA RE/MAX Series entries at DuQuoin is scheduled for 9 am
followed by SIM Factory Pole Award Qualifying at 11 am. The start of the
Southern Illinois 100 is set for 1 pm.
After shaking the dirt off at DuQuoin the A.Casola Farms Ford team heads
to Chicagoland Speedway, a 1.5-mile D shaped tri-oval for the running of ARCA
200 on Saturday, September 8th. Qualifying takes place on Friday,
September 7th, at 5 p.m. And on Saturday, September 15th, Casola gets
back to short track racing with the running of the Eddie Gilstrap Motors ARCA
Fall Classic by Advance Auto at the one-half-mile Salem, Indiana Speedway.