ARCA

Kansas: Frank Kimmel preview

Kimmel Racing Ready for Kansas CORNELIUS, N.C. (September 28, 2009) -- After a brief opportunity to catch a collective breath, the Kimmel Racing team heads to Kansas Speedway for Thursday's Kansas Lottery 150. "Overall, I think Kansas Speedway ...

Edited: Oct 8, 2009, 2:26 AM

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Kimmel Racing Ready for Kansas

CORNELIUS, N.C. (September 28, 2009) -- After a brief opportunity to catch a collective breath, the Kimmel Racing team heads to Kansas Speedway for Thursday's Kansas Lottery 150.

"Overall, I think Kansas Speedway is a really nice race track and I love going there," said Frank Kimmel. "It's a typical mile and a half so there are two distinct grooves and you can pass on the outside which makes for better racing. It also has a very smooth racing surface so you can really get a lot of speed out of your car."

Following the last race at Salem, the team had a little over a week to prepare for the second to last event of the season. While it may not seem like much down time, the team welcomed the off weekend as an opportunity to tweak both their primary and back up intermediate track cars for Kansas and Rockingham, in hopes of recording their first win of the 2009 season.

Crew Chief Bill Kimmel Jr. chose to bring "the Biff" to Kansas Speedway for his driver/brother Frank Kimmel. The car was last run at Chicago where the No. 44 Ansell/Menards team qualified seventh and finished fifth.

"Because it is a cookie cutter race track, similar to Kentucky and Chicago, we're going with a similar package to what we ran at those tracks," said Bill Kimmel Jr. "Both races at Kentucky were good for us and Chicago was a solid race from start to finish, so we're going with that set up and try to improve on it Thursday in Kansas."

Kimmel Jr. went on to explain that last year's race at Kansas Speedway, where Frank Kimmel finished in 20th place, was not a good indicator for the team's potential.

"We can't compare last year at Kansas because we raced what was basically a short track car that just didn't handle the way it needed to," said Kimmel Jr. "This year we're better prepared and feel like our intermediate track program, with true intermediate track race cars, has been really competitive so we expect that to continue during this coming race."

Aside from last season, Kimmel's previous history at Kansas Speedway is stellar. In eight races at the track, Kimmel has six top-five finishes and two wins. He has led a total of 295 laps at the 1.5-mile track and has two pole awards.

During the series' first visit to Kansas Speedway in 2001, Kimmel took part in two events on race day. The first was a NASCAR Winston West event in which Kimmel won the race, becoming the first driver to visit Victory Lane at the new facility. The second event of the day was the inaugural ARCA RE/MAX Series event and Kimmel nearly won that race, as well. With six laps to go in the event, Kimmel was leading by a large margin when he broke a valve spring. Despite the setback, Kimmel finished the race in second place on just seven cylinders.

He returned the next year to win the race from the pole position and has since logged an average start of fifth place and an average finish of sixth place.

-credit: kr

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