Zane Smith (No. 41 LaPaz Margarita Mix/ICON Vehicle Dynamics Toyota) has a 45-point lead over MDM Motorsports teammate Sheldon Creed (No. 28 United Rentals Toyota) heading into Monday’s General Tire Grabber 100 presented by Federated Auto Parts for the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards at the DuQuoin State Fair, the final round of the four-race CGS Imaging 4 Crown Championship.
The four-race championship-within-a-championship started in 1984, and highlighted the diversity of the ARCA schedule. The series competes on superspeedways, intermediate tracks, short tracks, and dirt tracks, and this year’s schedule for the 4 Crown included Talladega Superspeedway, Madison International Speedway, Pocono Raceway, and the finale at DuQuoin.
Smith opened the CGS Imaging 4 Crown with a narrow victory at Talladega Superspeedway. Smith narrowly edged Joe Graf, Jr. (No. 77 Big Tine Ford) at the finish in a statistical dead heat. The margin of victory, 0.000 on the electronic timing and scoring, was determined through a photo finish review to be about 2 inches. It was Smith’s first career series win. Chandler Smith (No. 20 Craftsman Toyota) won the next CGS 4 Crown event at Madison International Speedway, giving him his first series victory as well. Zane Smith followed his Talladega win with his second CGS 4 Crown win at Pocono in July, boosting his advantage in the standings to 45 points over teammate Creed.
There are several championship scenarios that could play out. Smith will lock up the title if he finishes ahead of Creed at DuQuoin, or should he merely finish seventh or better, even if Creed were to win. Should Creed win and Smith finishes eighth, they tie. If Creed wins and Smith finishes ninth or worse, Creed wins. If Creed does not win, but Smith finishes exactly eight positions behind, they are tied.
Through ARCA tiebreaker rules, if Creed wins and they are tied, he would win based on top-five finishes; if Creed doesn’t win and they tie, then Smith wins based on wins.
Davey Allison won the inaugural 4 Crown Championship. Other notable winners include former series champions Lee Raymond, Tracy Leslie, Bob Keselowski, Bobby Bowsher, Bill Venturini, Tim Steele, and Frank Kimmel. Current NASCAR spotter Jason Jarrett is a former winner, as is NASCAR on NBC television personality Parker Kligerman, current Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Chris Buescher, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver Grant Enfinger and the last two series champions, Chase Briscoe and Austin Theriaut.
The General Tire Grabber 100 presented by Federated Auto Parts at the DuQuoin State Fair is scheduled for Labor Day Monday, September 3. Practice is scheduled for 10:45 am ET/9:45 am ET, General Tire Pole Qualifying is scheduled for 12:30 pm ET/11:30 am CT, and the green flag is set to wave at 3 pm ET/2 pm CT. The will be televised live on MAVTV; ARCARacing.com will have live timing, scoring, track updates and scanner audio throughout each on track session of the day for registered users.
ARCA PR
