August 5, 2024 (Concord, NC) – Short track racing at its best! With rain in the air and dramatic lightning illuminating the night skies Saturday’s ARCA Menards Series Shore Lunch 250 at Elko Speedway will go down as one of the most dramatic finishes in recent years.
In front of a near capacity crowd the 250-lap event came down to a restart and mad dash to determine the race winner. Drivers Lavar Scott, William Sawalich and Venturini Motorsports’ (VMS) Kris Wright took the green flag restart with 7-laps remaining.
Wright, who ran inside the top-5 the entire night closed in on the bumpers of Scott and Sawalich running side-by-side as the three drivers pushed their cars to the limit as the laps counted down.
As the cars crossed the stripe for the white flag the intensity grew as the drivers ran down the backstretch making contact. Entering the final turn, Wright dove to the inside, going three-wide on the exit; all three drivers got sideways taking the checkered flag in dramatic fashion. In the end Sawalich inched out Scott by 0.011 seconds with Wright spinning across the stripe 4/100th of a second behind.
VMS driver Isabella Robusto continued to impress as she kept her No. 55 Mobil 1 Toyota in contention all night. The 17-year-old driver showed resilience as a mid-race incident racing for the top spot threatened her chances, but her team jumped into action to keep her in contention.
The final results for the Shore Lunch 250 were Wright in third, Robusto in fourth, Toni Breidinger in seventh, Sean Hingorani in eighth, and Amber Balcaen rounding out the night in twelfth.
The ARCA Menards Series season continues in two weeks with the annual trip to Michigan International Speedway for the running of the Henry Ford Health 200 on Friday, August 16. Fans unable to attend in person will be able to watch the race at 6 p.m. ET on FS1.
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