After qualifying in the top 10 for the Menards 200 ARCA RE/MAX Series event Sunday at Toledo Speedway (OH), it appeared Craig Goess was going to cruise to a top-five finish.  That changed coming to the white flag lap when a competitor appeared to retaliate against another driver, sweeping Goess up in the mess, trashing his car and relegating him to a 14th-place finish.

"We had a really good weekend up until turn three and four of the white-flag lap," said Goess.  "We made a good pit stop and made an improvement on the car.  We passed a bunch of cars and were running fifth."

Just a few laps from the end of the race, Goess was satisfied with where he thought he was going to finish.  That was until he was caught up in a wreck he later found out was not an accident.

"(Paul) Menard, (Frank) Kimmel and I were running tight," explained Goess.  "You couldn't have slipped a piece of paper between us.  We had two green-white-checkered restarts.  I guess Menard roughed up (Patrick) Sheltra early in the race and his car got pretty messed up, so he (Sheltra) was a ton of laps down.  They (his crew) fixed his car well enough for him to come back out and do the old "Cole Trickle" move at the end, except they didn't wait until the checkered flag was thrown. 

"We were coming through three and four.  Sheltra drifted up high, so I stayed low behind Kimmel, protecting my spot since I knew the #32 (Matt Merrell) was right behind me.  All of a sudden Sheltra took a hard left into Menard.  The #32 ran in the back of me, Kimmel crossed up and we went straight up to the wall.  We nosed in, then whiplash tail-slapped the wall.  It destroyed the car over someone else's problem."

Destroying his race car was one problem, but for Goess, it was a matter of principle, respect and the way he tried to avoid contact the whole night, only to be swept up in something that he felt was uncalled for. 

"It was very disappointing and a disgusting way to finish out a race.  We put ourselves in a good position and kept our noses clean the whole race.  We dodged a bunch of wrecks that were close calls and we had a solid top five that got completely extinguished because we got caught up in some stuff that should not have ever happened."

Goess will shake off the frustration from Toledo by heading to Michigan International Speedway to test prior to his next race, which will be the Pocono ARCA 200 at Pocono Raceway (PA) on Saturday, June 6th.

Solid Day at Toledo Turns Ugly After Goess Gets Junked By Competitor

Toledo Post-Race Report

Craig Goess. (51 Sports Photo)