ARCA: Frank Kimmel Talks Season, Health of the Series, and Retirement

During the off-season preceding the 2014 ARCA Series presented by Menards season opener at Daytona, Frank Kimmel decided that he would leave ThorSport Racing to drive for Win-Tron Racing. The first season with this team didn’t go well in terms of winning races as he went through the year without a victory following a championship run in 2013. With that said, Kimmel ranked the performance with the team as a five because of the big strides the team made later in the year. He expressed how excited he is to get on with 2015 and feels that next year will be much better with Win-Tron Racing than 2014.

 

“I think it’s all across the board as I don’t think there is one thing that’s bad, I just think there are areas that can be improved on everything,” he said in an exclusive interview with Speedway Digest. “There have been parts of this season that haven’t been really healthy because I had a pinched nerve in my back and I don’t think I was doing the best job. Some of the race cars we use got tore up throughout the year that put us back and I think our engine program could be better, too. Other than qualifying, I think that’s a major area where I can look at to get stronger.” 

 

Over the course of his career, he has always wanted to move up into the NASCAR ranks, but just couldn’t find the right funding to do so. Because of this, he made the decision to stay over in the ARCA Series because that is where the money is for him and the budget for the sponsors. Starting seven Cup Series events with one Nationwide Series race and 14 truck series contests weren’t too successful for him. This is the reason why he stuck with the series after 25 years and 491 career starts later.

 

“Our sport is a money driven sport as I’ve had some great sponsors over the years but all of them had a budget to stay in this sport. They didn’t have a budget enough to be in a truck, Nationwide or Sprint Cup Series car so you kinda gotta go where the money is.”

 

Kimmel shared a lot of positive thoughts when asked about the current state and future prospects of the ARCA Series. He’s enjoyed the success that he has made over the course of his ARCA career and seeing the higher levels of competition over the past few years. It makes him very proud to see that ARCA is thriving like it has been yet also believes that the series is in great hands for many years to come.

 

During an off weekend for the ARCA Series you will probably find Kimmel around race cars or a race track somewhere. When he’s off, he enjoys building race cars in the shop at home, racing dirt cars or at the race track helping and supporting his son, Frankie. It is no secret by any means that he loves being around racing 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

 

Despite being a 52-year-old, you won’t see Kimmel retire from racing anytime soon. He wants to race at numerous dirt tracks to keep his hand in racing once he retires from the ARCA ranks. Because he expressed his love for dirt racing, it wouldn’t be surprising if maybe Kimmel will run just the two dirt races on the series schedule each year. He has 13 total ARCA wins combined at both the current dirt tracks. 

 

Finally in 1994, which was his third year of racing full-time, Kimmel was able to score his first victory. In 1998, he drove to Victory Lane nine times with 16 top-fives and 19 top-10 finishes to capture his first of 10 ARCA championships. After losing the 1999 championship, he went out and stole the title each year from 2000-2007. Through the last seven years, including his championship run in 2013, Kimmel hasn’t been very strong as he’s been struggling after switching from numerous teams. It’ll be interesting to see how he will run in the years to come despite not being a young driver.