An Empty Shop With No Room To Spare

Two months ago the 5,000 square foot floor that makes up Kimmel Racing was filled with race cars. If you stopped by the shop today, you would find a completely different scene. Five different chassis that made up that cluster of race cars have since been removed from the shop floor, all for different reasons.

"Well, two of the cars were involved in wrecks. Chassis #160 was the Talladega car; and #52 was the car wrecked at Kentucky during practice," said team owner Bill Kimmel Jr. "We sent #13 and #320 off for some updates, and #54 is getting its paint touched up. The shop is pretty bare right now...but it won't be that way in a few weeks." Chassis #320 was the throwback paint scheme at Salem Speedway this season and chassis #13 was the dirt car that won the pole at DuQuoin in September. "We did a lot of work on the front end geometry of #320 prior to Salem and it worked out so well, we decided to do the same to #13. That, and Will beat it up pretty good at the end of the DuQuoin race (laughing). So we're also having those issues addressed."

"The changes we made to #320 really helped it at Salem and we think those changes will translate over to the Springfield/DuQuoin car. Unfortunately, there are some things with #320 that we couldn't quite get where we wanted, mostly related to the trailing arms and the track bar. So we sent that one out for some updates." Chassis #54 is going to be the super-speedway car.

Coming back to the shop will be those three cars, #13, #320 and #54 as well as a new (new to Kimmel Racing) intermediate car that they bought from Lira Motorsports which will be known as Chassis #103. "Just to give you an idea how new this one is to us, our "newest" car in the fleet is #13. It's 10 years old. #103 is just two years old," said driver Will Kimmel. "This is really, really going to help us on the intermediate tracks."


Kimmel Racing has shown chart topping speed in practice, qualifying and during the race at the intermediate tracks with Kimmel behind the wheel. The #69 had legitimate chances to win at Kentucky, Chicago and Kansas in 2015. This new car could be the catalyst that the team has been looking for to make the jump to the top of the scoring tower at the end of the race.

"Dad and I are really excited for 2018. The team is excited, the sponsors are excited, everyone involved. We've spent the last few years trying to dig out of holes that we didn't start and we're just now poking our heads out and looking at the horizon. It's going to be a good year."

The team hasn't announced what their plans are for 2018 but fans should expect to see the famous Kimmel Red race cars on more than just the ARCA circuit. "We've got a couple opportunities we're exploring. We're a race team, that's what we do. We race."