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ARCA: Canadian Steve Arpin Wins At Texas
Steve Arpin is on a roll in the ARCA Racing Series...
ARCA Communications  | http://www.arcaracing.com  |  Posted April 17, 2010   Fort Worth, TX
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Steve Arpin (Left) celebrates in victory lane after winning Friday night's ARCA Racing Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: ARCA Racing Series)
Steve Arpin earned his second consecutive ARCA Racing Series victory Friday night, winning the Rattlesnake 150 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Arpin, who scored his first career win last Sunday at the half-mile Salem Speedway in Indiana, powered by Grant Enfinger off Turn 2 on a lap 91 restart and paced the field from there. He led the final 14 laps around the 1.5-mile trioval, ultimately beating out Craig Goess by .326 seconds in a green-white-checkered finish.

Arpin also assumed sole possession of the series championship points lead in the process.

"This is a great, great race track," the winning driver said. "We had a really good car all night, and Hoosier gave us a super good tire."

Arpin was earlier involved in a lap 12, four-car incident between turns 3 and 4, where he spun with Patrick Sheltra, Joey Coulter and teammate Mikey Kile. Arpin continued with only slight front fender damage that only temporarily hampered the performance of his Venturini Motorsports car.

"(Team owner) Billy Venturini and the guys did an awesome job tonite," Arpin said in victory lane. "We got ourselves in a touchy spot, spun, and the damage affected our aero a bit. The team did a great job repairing the car and giving me a chance."

Arpin, who started 22nd, moved into the top 10 by lap 25 and stayed there most of the night. The Canadian took the lead on lap 92 and was unchallenged until the last lap when Goess mounted his unsuccessful bid for the top spot.

Goess finished in the runner-up position for the second straight week and experienced bittersweet emotions.

"It's great to run good, to run up front, but it's disappointing to be this close and not win," Goess said. "We had a little miscue in the pits, but I don't know whether we could have beat Steve tonight anyway."

Goess led 28 laps before coming to pit road for his second and final stop for tires with 30 laps to go. He came off pit road in fifth and used the remainder of the race to work his way back toward the front. On the final lap, Goess caught Arpin but could not pass.

Enfinger finished third after leading 22 laps in his Ford.

"I think we pretty much made all the right decisions today," Enfinger said. "I pushed the car a little hard with 40 to go, and I think we might have run out of tires. We were running sixth and I felt like it was time to get up there and I really didn't anticipate many guys coming back with tires. Just unfortunate that we were unable to seal the deal again, but we got some good runs in."

Justin Marks finished fourth after leading the first 39 laps and earning the Aaron's Lap Leader award, while Robb Brent rounded out the top five in a Dodge.

Dakoda Armstrong earned RE/MAX Rookie of the Race honors.

The starting grid was set by 2009 owners points when qualifying was rained out Thursday afternoon.

The event was slowed by caution eight times for 43 laps. The most serious-looking incident occurred on lap 38 when Tom Berte made hard contact with the inside SAFER barriers off Turn 2 in a single-car spin.

Berte was uninjured in the incident.

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