ARCA Podcast to ARCA Driver, Colby Evans Planning 2024 ARCA Menards Series Debut

ARCA Podcast to ARCA Driver, Colby Evans Planning 2024 ARCA Menards Series Debut

PC: X (Twitter)- Colby Evans Known as the ARCA/NASCAR S&P Cars account over on social media, 22 year old Colby Evans from West Des Moines, Iowa is planning to make the jump to stock cars for the first time. A lifelong fan of the ARCA Menards Series, he is finally getting to live his dream…

sirrelkinstein

January 17, 2024

5 minutes

Arca, arca 2024, arca menards, Arca Menards Series, arca racing, arca racing 2024, ARCA/NASCAR S&P Cars, Brad Smith, Colby Evans, Interview, nascar, start and park, Wayne Peterson

PC: X (Twitter)- Colby Evans

Known as the ARCA/NASCAR S&P Cars account over on social media, 22 year old Colby Evans from West Des Moines, Iowa is planning to make the jump to stock cars for the first time. A lifelong fan of the ARCA Menards Series, he is finally getting to live his dream of racing stock cars as many drivers in the ARCA Menards Series intend to do. Recently, I sat down with him for a zoom interview to discuss his 2024 racing plans.

Q: What made you want to race in this series?
A: “Well it’s one of the most cost effective series’ to run in this day and age cause it is all about the mighty dollar and not really based off of talent as we know in this day and age. I’ve never been hugely interested in the late model scene”

This was one of the first indicators as to how Evans fell in love with the series as many teams in ARCA do not have budgets you would see in a higher up series. Evans also talked about how he’s been able to work as a crew member in the series since 2017 for Wayne Peterson and Brad Smith and how the whole garage is like a family. A series like ARCA having a very diverse schedule also got his interest with the series still running big tracks like plate tracks, intermediates, road courses, dirt tracks and not just only short tracks which speaking of tracks, here’s my next question.

NASCAR, ARCA announce framework for four championship series in 2020 - ARCA

PC: arcaracing.com

Q: What tracks do you want to compete at in 2024
A: “Well it also comes down to the ones I’m approved for, you can’t just start going balls to the wall plate tracks, no you gotta work your way up. I’m not approved to run the Daytona test.” “Iowa is where I’m looking to make my debut, basically the tracks that I’m the closest too, IRP, I’d love to run that one, Kansas, probably Elko, I wanna do the dirt tracks so badly, I wanna do both of them.”

There was also talk about how Colby ended up working with Brad Smith for the first time in 2020. Evans has previously worked as a crew member for teams such as MBM in xfinity, Norm Benning Racing and Hill Motorsports in the truck series. But I had also wondered what got him to work for Brad Smith this much.

PC: Colby Evans- X (Twitter)

Q: What made you work with Brad this much?
A: “I started off originally with (Wayne) Peterson, and I worked with him for a couple of years.” “What really put me to Brad was simply at the time (Wayne) he had too many people. It was 2020, the height of Covid, I was coming to Iowa wanting to work the race, but Wayne already had the allottment of crew guys ARCA approved of like a select number of crew guys.” “When I called Wayne, he said “I’m gonna give you Brad’s number”” “He then gave me Brad’s number and I give Brad up a call, and he had only one other guy going with him. So I’m like, “ok I’m going with you.”

I was surprised to know Colby didn’t know Brad when Wayne got in touch with him considering how Colby had worked with Wayne multiple times before in the ARCA garage and was a big fan of these smaller teams which leads me to my next question.

PC: Mello Yellow Productions

Q: What made you such a big fan of all these smaller race teams?
A: “Blue collar, absolutely killing themselves every week for the littlest amount of success, if you don’t respect that I don’t think you’re a racing fan.”

I can agree with this statement, there does need to be more respect for the guys out there across all Nascar Divisions who work the hardest even if they’re not going to run the best. You have guys in cup like Rick Ware and BJ McLeod, guys in xfinity like Mike Harmon and Carl Long, guys in trucks like Josh Reaume and Norm Benning, guys in ARCA like Brad and Wayne who work so hard knowing winning is not an easy thing for them. These guys all represent blue collar racing which we don’t see much of in Nascar anymore.

PC: Eric Bronson/ARCA Racing

My final question was about what does he want to achieve in 2024 as the Zoom clock was running out of time.

A: “Live the dream, it’s just a childhood dream. I’ve always wanted to do it. There was a long time where I was like, I ain’t gonna be able to do this and I said about 4-5 months ago, F it. It’s now or never, you got all of this money saved in the bank, do it. It’s just living the dream and if I’m a start and park legend, I’m a start and park legend. If I never win I never win. If I don’t even get a damn top 10 I don’t get a top 10. But I can say, I competed in a freaking stock car race.”

For me, that’s a great dream to have. It’s one I want to have too. People like Colby have actually motivated to want to do this one day but for me, not until I’m out of college at the very earliest. The same thing goes for me, if I run in ARCA in the future, it’ll be to live the dream of being a stock car driver. Hopefully Colby Evans can inspire more racing fans to want to acheive the dream of being a race car driver, even if it’s in Nascar’s fourth tier series.