The Menards 150 remained under caution well past 9 p.m. ET Friday, with officials still sorting out the wreckage that swallowed championship leader Jake Bollman’s Nitro Motorsports Toyota.
The crash scrambled the outlook for Bollman’s ARCA Menards Series title fight with his own Nitro Motorsports teammate Thomas Annunziata. Somehow, Bollman’s crew later got his car running again and put the driver back into the race.
“They can’t park you for minimum speed because you’re passing here. We’ll get one more point here,” Bollman was told over his radio, as reported by Brett Winningham of Speedway Digest. Carson Brown won the race.
When the checkers flag came down, Annunziata finished fifth and won the ARCA Menards season championship by virtue of a tiebreaker over Bollman.
Rain wiped out practice and qualifying earlier Friday, so ARCA lined up the field entirely by owner points, handing pole position to Gio Ruggiero’s No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and slotting Bollman’s No. 20 Nitro Motorsports Toyota third.
Jake Bollman’s Crash Sequence Comes Into Focus
The trouble started on lap 23, when Annunziata turned Bollman entering Turn 1. ARCA’s official social media account posted video of that contact, a separate incident from the bigger wreck that followed. Bollman’s Nitro Motorsports Toyota absorbed only cosmetic damage and pressed on.
The far more serious crash arrived near the race’s midpoint, when Bollman’s No. 20 made contact with a spinning Will Kimmel’s No. 69 Kimmel Racing Ford. Bollman then came to a stop near the top of the track before Austin Vaughn’s No. 91 Maples Motorsports Ford T-boned him, according to NASCAR insider Bob Pockrass’s account of the wreck.
Bollman climbed out of the car under his own power, and no injuries have been reported for him or any other driver caught up in the incident. Earlier reports also placed Michael Maples’ car in the mix, though the clearest accounts center on the Kimmel and Vaughn contact.
Minutes after climbing out, Bollman found an FS1 interviewer and delivered a defiant message.
“Let’s go out there and get this championship back,” he said, according to motorsports reporter Joseph Srigley.
He acknowledged the wreck could hurt his championship push, but said that setbacks are part of who he is and that he’ll bounce back, even if the turnaround doesn’t come the same night.
“We’re gonna get it back out there because we’re never giving up,” Bollman told TV cameras.
Bollman’s Team Fights to Save the Race
Amazingly, with 20 laps to go, Bollmans crew got Bollman’s car back on the track, though the car looked like it had just been in a wreck. But it was running.
“Bollman is driving back to the track. He needs to finish within 15 spots of Annunziata,” Pockrass reported.
Bollman’s No. 20 crew went to work on the mangled Toyota rather than parking it for the night, aiming to get their driver back on the track and salvage whatever points remain available, according to pit-lane reporting.
Bollman entered Friday having finished outside the top 10 only once all season, an 18th-place run at Talladega Superspeedway, according to a Racing America guide.
That consistency now hangs on the outcome of a bent-up race car. Should Bollman wind up last in the 27-car field, Annunziata would need only an 11th-place finish or better to steal the championship away, according to unofficial scenarios.
Should the two Nitro Motorsports teammates finish the season deadlocked in points, Annunziata already holds the tiebreaker from his win earlier this year at Lime Rock Park, according to Speedway Digest.
The race resumed with FS1’s broadcast continuing as crews worked to get cars, including Bollman’s No. 20, ready to resume.
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