MOORESVILLE, NC :: Matt Kurzejewski is hoping to take his family owned car to victory lane at the Daytona International Speedway in a few weeks. Kurzejewski, who recorded a couple wins at Tri-County Motor Speedway in his Late Model days, hopes he can improve after scoring two top-10 finishes in two starts in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards tour last year.
Kurzejewski will be racing again in a car owned by his father and prepared by ARCA icon Bob Keselowski, father of 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion Brad Keselowski. Kurzejewski finished ninth and 10th in his two ARCA starts last year at Daytona and Talladega respectively. Along with his ARCA attempt, he also has a modified team ready to head to New Smyrna Speedway as well.
“We’ve got a great superspeedway car. Bob may be old school but he’s very intelligent,” Kurzejewski said. “He knows what’s going on. He knows how to make it go fast and go through the air on superspeedways.”
At Daytona, a lot of things are out of your control. Kurzejewski expects a top-six finish but feels the most important thing is to stay out of trouble.
“Our expectations are a top six finish or so,” Kurzejewski remarked. “You can have the fastest car and finish 20th. It all depends on the luck of the draw. The most important thing is keeping your nose clean and track position is important along with who your drafting partners are.”
Kurzejewski says he has worked with Bob Keselowski every time he’s run in the ARCA Series and said he’d like to run some NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races as well.
“We’ll run Daytona and Talladega for sure and maybe some Truck Series races,” Kurzejewski stated. “I ran a few truck races last year with Bobby Dotter. I’m not quite sure what I have planned. We still have our modified team and those cars are supposed to be at New Smyrna.”
This year’s Daytona ARCA race will be the first race in ARCA competition to feature double file restarts. Kurzejewski thinks it will make things more exciting for the fans and could help the drivers as well.
“It’s either going to help people or hurt people depending on which lane has more experience,” Kurzejewski explained. “I ran in to that problem a lot last year. A few guys who aren’t experienced or not aggressive and don’t know how to restart. Hopefully, it will make it more exciting for the fans. In the field of drivers, it will help or hurt.
“It all depends on who you’re lined up with. Last year, I was always drafting with Frank Kimmel or Bobby Gerhart. It’s hard to plan who you draft with. Last year, in both races, we ran our own strategy. We were running top three at Talladega and one of the Sharp’s cars missed a shift on the restart and got on our hood, car overheated and we went a lap down. We got up to ninth before the race restarted.”
The Lucas Oil 200 presented by MAVTV American Real at Daytona will be contested on Saturday, February 15th with the green flag dropping at 4:15pm EST. The race will be televised live on FOX Sports 1. Qualifying for the race will be on Friday, February 14th.
