By Jeff Pederson
Pedal Down Promotions
(PEDAL DOWN PROMOTIONS) September 24, 2021 – Following 17 weeks of wheel-to-wheel competition, the 2021 Plymouth Dirt Track Racing 360 Sprint Car championship will be determined on the final night of the season at The Plymouth Dirt Track at the Sheboygan County Fairgrounds in Plymouth, Wis. this Saturday, Sept. 25 with two highly accomplished Sprint Car combatants in contention for the title.
Fourth-year 360 Sprint Car competitor Travis Arenz of Sheboygan Falls has turned in a season for the ages, which has included six PDTR A-main victories, to hold a 22-point cushion over two-time and defending PDTR 360 Sprint Car champion Brandon McMullen of Oshkosh heading into the final night of the 2021 PDTR campaign.
As the current Midwest Sprint Car Association point leader, Arenz has tallied a total of 10 360 Sprint Car A-main victories this season and will be looking to lock up his first MSA and PDTR 360 Sprint Car titles on Saturday.
“Our 2021 season has gone extremely well,” Arenz said. “Unfortunately, my personal goal of finishing in top three every night was not accomplished. With the strong competition we are facing, finishing with double-digit wins this season has shown how well our team has done through hard work.”
Proving how fickle the sport of auto racing can be, Arenz’s stellar 2021 campaign has not come without a dose of adversity.
“We had two bad nights back to back in July,” Arenz said. “One of them was my fault for driving the car too hard and the other came when my RACEceiver stopped working and I drove over another driver’s right rear tire, causing damage to the front end of our car.
“Since then, we’ve concentrated on the job in front of us instead of everything going on around us and our results have shown that,” Arenz said.
Arenz, who has collected 17 PDTR Outlaw Compact 4-cylinder and three PDTR B Mod A-main victories during his standout 15-year career, has been amazingly consistent this season with 14 top-five and 16 top-10 A-main showings to his credit in 17 PDTR 360 Sprint Car main events.
Arenz, who has tallied 20 overall MSA 360 Sprint Car victories in four seasons, will be looking to add a second PDTR title to his list of racing accomplishments, after claiming the PDTR Outlaw Compact 4-cylinder tile in 2013.
“The biggest thing I need to do to accomplish the PDTR 360 Sprint Car title on Saturday is to stay smooth, constant and finish the night strong like we have done all season,” Arenz said.
Looking ahead to the 2022, Arenz has not yet nailed down any concrete plans.
“My plans for 2022 are unclear at the moment,” Arenz said. “My goal is to be able to run a full season with the Bumper to Bumper IRA 410 Sprint Car Series, but it’s going to take a lot of backing to achieve my goal.”
McMullen, who is seeking his third PDTR 360 Sprint Car championship, has enjoyed an equally strong 2021 season with four main event victories to go along 13 top-five and 16 top-10 A-main finishes during the 2021 PDTR 360 Sprint Car campaign.
The 12th-year 360 Sprint Car driver, who has four MSA titles on his impressive racing resume, entered the 2021 season with plans to run a part-time schedule and no intentions to compete for either the PDTR or MSA point titles.
“We came into this season just looking to have fun again and not run the full MSA schedule, while hitting almost all the nights at Plymouth for our sponsors,” McMullen said. “We were supposed to miss a night or two due to family events, but they ultimately were rained out, so we didn’t miss a night. With the way our season was going up to that point, we found ourselves in contention for the points battle.”
McMullen who ranks third on the all-time MSA A-main victory list with 34 total victories and stands second on the PDTR 360 Sprint A-main career win list with 24 career main-event victories, has been pleased with how his team’s season has panned out.
“Our season has gone really well overall with mostly a lot of good nights and a few frustrating ones,” McMullen said. “We started out at Plymouth with eight consecutive top-third finishes in the feature until we had a DNF [did not finish] when we had nowhere to go after another car spun.
“We’ve picked up a handful of feature wins with late-race passes in the last half of the year, which hopefully were exciting for the fans to watch,” he said.
After holding a 16-point lead in the PDTR 360 Sprint Car point standings with two nights remaining in the season, the past two events have not gone McMullen’s way.
As a result, McMullen finds himself trailing Arenz by 22 points heading in the Wisconsin Sprint Car Championships PDTR season finale on Sept. 25.
“This has been one of our most consistent years of racing up until the past two nights,” McMullen said. “The last two nights have been really uncharacteristic and frustrating as they are probably our worst back-to-back events we’ve had in several years. We ended up with about as bad of a pill draw we can get for each night and couldn’t dig our way out of it in the heat races like we did earlier this season. Heat races are so important in determining your night and I just struggled.
“In our last night at Plymouth on September 11th, I was too impatient throughout the evening and made mistakes I normally wouldn’t make, which hurt our team and other teams,” he said. “I would like to thank to the multiple teams, who somehow helped get us back out in the feature to still salvage a fifth-place finish on that night.”
With a fairly significant points gap to make up in order to challenge for the title during the final night, the former Plymouth resident is simply aiming to close out the season strong.
“It’ll be tough to catch Travis as he and his team have had a heck of a year, so I’m just going into the final night focusing on ourselves and looking to have fun,” McMullen said. “Hopefully, we can catch some lucky breaks. It’d be nice to end the season on a good note and pick up another feature win.”
With the book about to close on the 2021 season, McMullen is not completely sure what form his 2022 campaign will take.
“We would love to try purchasing a competitive 410 engine for our team and doing a handful of the local IRA shows,” McMullen said. “The only issue with that is financing. Unless we’re able to find some businesses or individuals who would like to help us out, we’ll likely be back in our 360 Sprint Car. As for the 2022 schedule, our family will have to discuss that over the off season based on what happens.”
Heading into the final PDTR 360 Sprint Car points race of the 2020 season, 2011 MSA and PDTR 360 Sprint Car champion Ben Schmidt of Plymouth stands 107 points out of the lead in third, while Kevin Karnitz of West Bend sits fourth, 114 points behind Arenz. 2008 PDTR 360 Sprint Car champ Lance Fassbender of Burnett is 178 points out of first place in fifth.
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The Wisconsin Sprint Car Championships event on Saturday, Sept. 25 at The Plymouth Dirt Track will feature the final points races of the season for the IRA Sprint Cars, Wisconsin Wingless Sprint Cars, MSA Sprint Cars, PDTR 360 Sprint Cars and IRA Lightning Sprints with 2021 champions crowned in all five divisions.
Pit gates open at 1 p.m. with spectator gates opening at 4 p.m. and on-track action 5 p.m. with qualifying and racing to follow.
For those unable to attend in person, the action on both nights will be broadcast live at www.floracing.com
The Plymouth Dirt Track at the Sheboygan County Fairgrounds is located at 229 Fairview Drive in Plymouth, Wis. For more information, visit www.plymouthdtr.com or check out Plymouth Dirt Track Racing on Facebook.
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For more information on Pedal Down Promotions, email pedaldownpromotions@gmail.com, visit www.pedaldownpromotions.com or call 920-323-7970.
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