McCumbee shoots past Gale to win Saturday's ARCA race

GLADEVILLE — Saturday's ARCA 150 was Cale Gale's to lose until Chad McCumbee took it away in the final laps.
McCumbee shot past Gale on the final restart with three laps remaining and went on to take his first ARCA RE/MAX victory by .266 seconds before a smattering of shivering spectators at sunny Nashville Superspeedway.
"I told my crew early on that we had a really good race car," McCumbee said. "If we take care of this thing, we can win this race.
"I don't know if [Gale] spun his tires a little bit or what? I knew we were good on restarts but I knew he was a lot better on extremely long runs... Either I did something that I hadn't been doing before and got an extremely good restart, which I really don't think happened, or he spun his tires a little bit on the restart."
Gale, the polesitter, led the most laps, 87 of 113, in the flag-filled fray which saw 43 laps run under six cautions, most of them early. He stayed out during the final yellow while McCumbee ducked in for four fresh tires for the finish. Gale also raced in the Pepsi 300 Busch Series race which followed and wasn't available for comment following the ARCA event.
Erin Crocker, in Ray Evernham's Dodge Charger, finished third.
"We'll take a third-place finish any day," Crocker said. "It lets us know that we're in contention and waiting for a win."
Eight-time ARCA champion Frank Kimmel was a rare non-factor in this race, starting 18th and finishing 10th. But he was one spot ahead of Justin Allgaier, enabling him to break a tie for the points lead with Allgaier and slip five points ahead with three races in the books. The series returns to Nashville Superspeedway in August.
The race began 23 minutes late due to a delay in the Busch qualifying session caused by Kyle Krisiloff's crash into the wall. Crew members spent some 20 minutes cleaning up the fluids which spilled from his car. With the Busch race scheduled for a 2:30 p.m. start on ESPN2, it appeared a shortened race, which happened last August prior to the Craftsman Truck Series race, was possible. But despite the cautions, the 150-mile race was completed in just under an hour and a half.
Sports Editor Andy Reed can be reached at 444-3952 ext. 17 or by e-mail at andy.reed@lebanondemocrat.com.