BROOKLYN, Mich. – Michael Self dominated the first 90 laps of the ARCA Menards Series VizCom 200 at Michigan Int’l Speedway, but needed a last lap pass to score his third victory of the season.
Self snuck past Ty Majeski, who was attempting to run the final 50 laps of the race on one tank of fuel, in turn three of the final lap.
Self led at will during the first 90 laps of the race, at times building a nine-second advantage over the field. He made his final pit stop of the night on lap 90, giving the lead to Majeski. With wins at Charlotte and Pocono, Majeski was looking for his third consecutive series victory and it looked like he had a chance to pull it off. As he entered the final set of corners on the final lap his fuel tank ran dry and Self blew by to take the lead and the win.
“Any time you’re up against a driver like Ty and his team you know it’s going to be tough,” Self said. “When my spotter told me the 22 was going to try to stretch it, I knew they had a good chance of making it because they’re that good. They came on the radio and said he sputtered a little when he came across the stripe to take the white, but he was still under power off of turn two and it made my heart sink a little bit. But then we got to three and he had run out of fuel and I knew we had him. He did what he needed to do and tried to block me but there’s just too much room here and we were able to get by.”
Self credited his third win of the season to a call on pit road by crew chief Shannon Rursch.
“When we heard they were going to try to stretch it to the end, we knew we had to get off pit road really quickly,” Self said. “We didn’t take tires because we knew if we did it would take too much time. It turns out that we needed all the time we could just to get to him. If we took tires we wouldn’t have had the time to catch him on the last lap, even if he did run out of fuel. This win is all because of Shannon on the guys in the pits.”
Despite narrowly missing out on his third straight series victory, Majeski was upbeat with his runner-up finish.
“That was the only shot we had and we almost made it,” Majeski said. “We had a lot of issues today. First we had a plug wire come loose, and then the digital dash came unplugged. We didn’t know how much fuel pressure we had or what the RPM was so making a green flag stop would have been a disaster. Our only chance was the try to stretch it. We did everything we could. If I ran any harder, we would have run out sooner. If I saved any more he would have caught me and passed us. This is the first time I’ve ever been in the position to have to save fuel and I think I did a pretty good job the circumstances just didn’t work out in our favor today.”
Bret Holmes finished third and was the last car on the lead lap. Joe Graf Jr. finished fourth, followed by Tanner Gray in fifth.
The finish:
Michael Self, Ty Majeski, Bret Holmes, Joe Graf Jr., Tanner Gray, Travis Braden, Christian Eckes, Myatt Snider, Scott Melton, C.J. McLaughlin, Morgan Baird, Riley Herbst, Brad Smith, Brandon McReynolds, Tim Richmond, Connor Hall, Tommy Vigh Jr., Dick Doheny.