Upcoming ARCA, NWES races feature record entries for women

The ARCA Menards Series‘ race at the Milwaukee Mile on 28 August and the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series‘ EuroNASCAR 2 round at Autodrom Most on 3/4 September are shaping up to have historic grids for female drivers. The former has six women entered, which would be tied for the most in series history, while the latter’s provisional entry list currently has five such drivers named.

The six female ARCA drivers are led by rookies and full-time competitors Toni Breidinger and Amber Balcaen, who are respectively fifth and sixth in points. Also entered are Mandy Chick, Steph Moyer, Amber Slagle, and Rita Thomason.It ties the record set at Daytona in 2010 with Jennifer Jo Cobb, Jill George, Milka Duno, Leilani Munter, Alli Owens, and Danica Patrick (Amber Cope would have been the seventh if she qualified but withdrew). Being a companion race with the ARCA Menards Series East, that division also enjoys the new record and surpasses ARCA West’s best of five at Las Vegas in 2021 with Balcarn, Slagle, Bridget Burgess, Mariah Boudrieau, and Jolynn Wilkinson.

Breidinger races for Venturini Motorsports while Balcaen represents Rette Jones Racing. Both have three top tens each, with Balcaen holding the best finish of seventh at Charlotte.

Chick finished eighteenth in her ARCA debut at IRP after being caught in a crash that also collected Balcaen. The 20-year-old, whose father Steve owned a NASCAR Truck Series team in the early 2000s, competed predominantly in late models before her family team purchased cars to enter ARCA.

Moyer is running full-time in the ARCA Menards Series East for Fast Track Racing, where she sits fourth in the standings with a best finish of ninth. The Milwaukee race is a combination event with the national ARCA series, which opened the door for her entry; the Iowa event in June was also the same and therefore the site of Moyer’s 2022 ARCA national début, though she retired with a brake failure. She also ran the ARCA race at Pocono and finished nineteenth.

Slagle is a newcomer to the ARCA Menards Series after racing on a limited basis in the ARCA Menards Series West for Steve McGowan Motorsports; in five career ARCA West starts, she notched three top tens. She also doubles as a mechanic and crew chief.

“I think more seat time has been better for me, I still need more to be where I want to be, so we’re coming around,” said Slagle. “We’ve had a lot of really good speed and good cars. It’s probably going to take some adjustment at first, but I’ve been wanting to run some biger tracks. Milwaukee is a great opportunity and more seat time for the year, we’re going to have a lot more planned.”

Thomason is a police officer and amateur sports car racer who débuted in ARCA at Berlin in June. Owing to her road racing background, she later ran the two road courses at Mid-Ohio and Watkins Glen, but retired from all three of her races to date with mechanical issues.

Credit: Klemen Sofric/NASCAR Whelen Euro Series

In the Euro Series, the initial EuroNASCAR 2 entry list for Most features Arianna Casoli, Luli Del Castello, Aliyyah and Yasmeen KoIoc, and Alina Loibnegger. All are competing for Lady Trophy honours.

In her seventh season, Casoli is the reigning Lady Trophy winner and also racing for the Legends Trophy. Driving for SpeedHouse, she sits twenty-first in points.

Aliyyah Koloc is seventeenth in points with a best finish of ninth in Vallelunga. However, while her twin sister and Buggyra ZM Racing team-mate Yasmeen is on the entry list, it is not known if she will take part as she has been focusing on preparing for the 2023 Dakar Rally; she also withdrew from the Brands Hatch round in June following injuries in a 24H Series race at Spa. Buggyra, who also fields a Dakar programme, simply said in a June press release that Yasmeen would not race in the NWES “for the time being.”

Del Castello might just be a rookie but she has looked comfortable in the Euro Series as she leads the Lady Trophy rankings with her thirteenth-place points position. She scored her first top ten in Vallelunga.

The first female Austrian to race in the Euro Series, Loibnegger is nineteenth in the standings. She finished second in the 2021 Lady Trophy.

While ARCA and Europe are enjoying the gender diversity, the only 2022 race in NASCAR’s top three divisions with multiple women is the Truck Series’ Clean Harbors 150 at Knoxville with Hailie Deegan and Jessica Friesen, the former being a series regular while the latter exclusively runs the dirt races. The pair along with Natalie Decker and Julia Landauer of the Xfinity Series are the lone female drivers with a national level start in 2022; Cobb has attempted a pair of Truck races but did not make either. Elsewhere the regional levels, women to compete in 2022 include Shantel Kalika and Sara Thorne in the Pinty’s Series, Logan Misuraca in ARCA East, Burgess in ARCA West, and Melissa Fifield in the Whelen Modified Tour.

While the national tiers are fairly limited in female drivers, the Xfinity Series had its first woman race director when Tiffany Myrick worked the New Holland 250 at Michigan in early August. She also became the first in such a position for ARCA at Kansas three months prior. Furthermore, ARCA’s FOX Sports broadcast is anchored by Jamie Little, the first female play-by-play announcer for a major racing series.