The first team has filed their entry for the 2019 ARCA Racing Series season opener in February at Daytona International Speedway.
Joe Gibbs Racing has filed the first official entry for the Lucas Oil 200. Riley Herbst will be back in the familiar No. 18 NOS Energy/ORCA Coolers/Advance Auto Parts Toyota for the Daytona race, but there will be a significant change within the team as Mark McFarland has joined JGR and will call the shots for the No. 18 team.
McFarland was part of the MDM Motorsports organization that led Sheldon Creed to the 2018 ARCA Racing Series national championship. It was announced at the series awards banquet in Indianapolis that McFarland will join JGR’s ARCA program in 2019.
Herbst will share the ride with team owner Joe Gibbs’s grandson Ty Gibbs in 2019. Ty, who is still just 16 years of age, is not yet eligible to race on the superspeedways but will be eligible to test at Daytona per ARCA’s testing policy. They will both take the wheel during the ARCA pre-season test at Daytona.
Gibbs has raced in late model competition throughout the southeast over the past two seasons. He finished eighth in CARS Tour points in 2018 with three top-five and five top-ten finishes. He has tested the ARCA car several times, including a visit to Toledo Speedway in the summer of 2018.
The team has not yet announced Gibbs’ full schedule, but he is eligible to compete on all the short tracks on the 2019 ARCA Racing Series schedule.
The annual pre-season Daytona test for ARCA Racing Series teams is set for January 11-12, with January 13 reserved as a rain date. The Lucas Oil 200 driven is set for Saturday, February 9.
