Fort Kent race car driver Austin Theriault made the most of his first visit to Minnesota on Saturday night.
Theriault nosed out Christian Eckes in a thrilling last-lap duel at the Shore Lunch 250 at Elko Speedway to capture his second ARCA victory of the season.
Theriault’s margin of victory was .029 seconds.
“It was one of the more action-packed finishes I’ve ever been a part of,” said the 23-year-old Theriault on Tuesday. “It was probably the most amount of back-and-forth racing over the final laps.”
On a restart with five laps to go, the 16-year-old Eckes was the leader and was on the inside with Theriault alongside him on the outside.
The two cars swapped paint racing side-by-side until Theriault pulled the nose of his car ahead of him on the outside.
But Eckes battled back and eventually regained the lead, forcing Theriault to pull in behind him.
Theriault then went to the inside to take the lead and the duel continued.
As they raced on the final lap of the 3/8-mile oval, Eckes made a last-ditch move to the inside in the final turn but Theriault was able to hold him off.
“I was never able to complete the pass on the outside because he kept running me up the track,” explained Theriault. “So I moved to the bottom and gave him a little nudge [to take the lead]. On the last lap, he nudged me in the last corner and got under me but it wasn’t enough.”
He said they raced each other aggressively but clean for the most part.
“It was an equal finish. He took steps to make sure I didn’t win and I took steps to make sure he didn’t win,” said Theriault.
Theriault opened the season by winning the Lucas Oil Complete Engine Treatment 200 at Daytona International Speedway and followed that up with two fourth-place finishes, a fifth and a sixth in his last race.
Theriault started fifth Saturday and said the car got better when the sun went down and the track cooled off. He credited crew chief Donnie Richeson with making a good adjustment to the car on the last pit stop.
“That’s what made the difference at the end,” said Theriault, who drives for Ken Schrader Racing.
Theriault doesn’t have much time to savor the win because he and his team left Tuesday afternoon for Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania where they will run the General Tire #AnywherelsPossible 200 on Friday. The race will air live on FS1-TV.
They will go from racing on their shortest track to one of the longest as Pocono Raceway is 2.5 miles long.
“The front straightaway is so long, you could land the biggest jumbo jet around on it,” said Theriault, who leads the ARCA points race. “The three corners are all different. That’s why the call it the ‘Tricky Triangle.’”
Theriault won at Daytona in a Chevy and drove a Toyota for his Elko win. He will be driving a Ford on Friday.
Theriault said Schrader bought the Ford chassis “five or six years ago” and fixed it up.
“He made it as new as possible,” said Theriault. “I’m excited about it. One of the good things about the ARCA series is you can still compete at a high level [without a brand-new car]. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on research, development and engineering. If you have smart people around you and good people, you don’t need multi-million-dollar equipment to compete.”