Crews Crushes ARCA Field In Wire-To-Wire Bristol Rout

Brent Crews celebrates in victory lane Thursday at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Jacob Seelman/Motorsports Hotspot photo)

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Seventeen-year-old Brent Crews was an unbeatable ARCA Menards Series gladiator Thursday evening inside The Last Great Colosseum.

After starting from the pole, Crews led every lap of the Bush’s Beans 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway for his fourth ARCA national win of the year and the sixth of his young career.

Though several different drivers attempted to battle him on restarts throughout the race, Crews fended off all challengers and pulled away to margins of as much as five seconds at different times.

A late yellow with eight laps left – when Timmy Hill cut a tire and slapped the outside wall from fifth place – set up overtime and a green-white-checkered finish, but Crews easily gapped fellow teenager Tristan McKee over the final two laps en route to the victory.

In taking the checkered flag, Crews was also credited with his third win of the season in the regional ARCA Menards Series East, as the Bristol event was the final combination race between the ARCA national and ARCA East fields.

It was a big moment for the Davidson, N.C., young gun who came into the race having circled Bristol on his schedule as “one of the big ones we wanted to win.”

“I’m so grateful to have this amazing race team behind me,” said Crews, whose perfect performance also clinched the ARCA East car owner championship for the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 team.

“Our Mobil 1 Camry was incredible from the moment we unloaded off the truck, and I’ve had this race in my sights for years now … going back to when I was a little kid watching Kyle Busch [one of Crews’ racing heroes] come and smoke everyone here,” he added. “Excited to be able to do it myself.”

Crews is doing double duty Thursday and qualified 15th for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.

McKee, a Spire Motorsports development driver who won his ARCA debut at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l in August, came up .621 seconds shy of a second major stock-car victory in as many months.

Brenden ‘Butterbean’ Queen crossed third and extended his national ARCA point lead to 50 in doing so.

Venturini Motorsports’ Leland Honeyman Jr. was fourth and Nitro Motorsports’ Thomas Annunziata finished fifth, followed by Sigma Performance Services’ Tyler Reif and a second Venturini car in second-generation driver Jake Finch.

Isaac Kitzmiller, a 16-year-old rookie from West Virginia, finished eighth to secure the ARCA Menards Series East championship. Bristol marked the last of eight ARCA East races on the season.

Driving for CR7 Motorsports, the team which also fields a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series entry for Grant Enfinger, Kitzmiller never finished outside the top 10 in ARCA East competition and beat Reif – his chief rival all year – by 17 points in the final tally.

The young Kitzmiller also bested his father, Jason, by one position in the final results Thursday to make it a true all-around celebration.

Jason Kitzmiller ended the 200-lapper ninth, with retina specialist-turned-racer Patrick Staropoli closing out the top 10.

Isaac Kitzmiller will be honored for his ARCA Menards Series East championship during ARCA’s Night of Champions celebration in the offseason.

Meanwhile, the national ARCA Menards Series continues its season Saturday night, Sept. 20 at historic Salem (Ind.) Speedway, one of the staple short tracks on the sanctioning body’s calendar.

Broadcast coverage of the Kentuckiana Ford Dealers 200 is slated for 8 p.m. ET, live on FS2 and the FOX Sports App, with live audio available through ARCAracing.com.