ARCA Daytona decided by controversial crash, one-lap shootout

Jake Finch believes he should have three wins in the ARCA race at Daytona International Speedway.

He has been beat straight-up. He was once misled by his teammate on a ‘teammate restart’ in overtime and now he and that same teammate (Gus Dean) were involved in a crash while sharing the front row after a push from Gio Ruggiero.

At the end of the day, it was Ruggiero and Joe Gibbs Racing celebrating on Saturday afternoon at Joe Gibbs Racing.

“Yeah, it’s awesome,” Ruggiero told Motorsport.com after the race. “It’s such a big win. Obviously wanted to win the Truck (Series) race but now looking forward to this O’Reilly race and think we will have a good shot there so I’m excited for it. I am really fortunate to be with this JGR group.”

Who did not find the result awesome was Finch and Dean, who dominated a large swath of this race, and shared the front row on the penultimate restart with two to go when they both got wrecked.

Again, this is the third time that Finch had the best car at Daytona, and came away empty handed.

“They all hurt about the same,” Finch said. “I feel like I should have three of these trophies by now but that’s part of it.”

At the time, Finch said he had not seen the (above) replay but he also didn’t need to either. Finch got a push that unsettled his car and did not find it acceptable that Ruggiero chased him below the yellow line to keep pushing.

“He pushed me until he wrecked me, you know what I mean,” Finch said. “I went below the yellow line, he was pushing me and just pushed me until he wrecked me. I know who I’m racing with and who he is, but it just sucks, because from my vantage point, I had the lane cleared. We would have both cleared (Dean) if he would have stayed in line.

“I don’t think he needed to push that hard to get us cleared down the backstretch.”

Finch said he would have accepted getting beat straight-up. He would accepted a fake out to get clean air. But he didn’t accept what he viewed as an intentional wreck.

“I think he knew exactly what he was doing, to be honest with you,” Finch said. “The biggest thing is, if you hit someone square, you hit them hard, and once you do, these things are so on edge, get off them.

“Wait for them to correct it and get it straight but he didn’t. I’m not his driver coach and he’s got the trophy so, I don’t know.”

Ruggiero, who won the Truck race at Talladega last fall, says he was getting a push from behind. He blamed it on Finch not being able to take the push.

“I was getting shoved from behind so it’s kind of part of racing here,” Ruggiero said. “You know, if you check up you’re going to get ran over yourself. So it was just trying to get our line forward and I wish they could have held it straight in front of me.”

Before the decisive incident, Dean declined the ‘teammate restart,’ and Finch was initially frustrated about that. He believes if they executed one more teammate restart, like they had all day, they would be 1-2 on the bottom and could race it out amongst themselves.

Dean said Ruggiero was hitting him so hard on the previous ‘teammate restarts,’ that it was going to lead to a wreck that way. He felt like Ruggiero was going to push one of them to the point of being wrecked and was just trying to get off his nose.

“He was really shoving on my bumper through that restart and trying to prevent us from doing the teammate restart,” Dean said. “I felt like they were going to be ready for it and my thought process was that having both of us on the front row would be the best way to control the finish. I thought it would be a better call.

“I thought if the drivers had been a little bit more conservative, than it would’ve worked out but it didn’t.”

Finch said he accepted that and they shook hands afterwards, lamenting that they both got wrecked.

How does Ruggiero balance being aggressive and also trying to get track position?

“There’s a balance between how I raced last night and how I raced today,” Ruggiero said. “You have to be patient at the right times and when it’s time to go, you have to go, and I was just trying to push our line forward to get us out front by the end of the race.”

Ruggiero went largely unchallenged in the one-lap shootout ahead of Jake Bollman, Kole Raz and Daniel Dye.