Grant Quinlan and Rette Jones Racing back again for Talladega rumble

TALLADEGA, Ala. – The last time Grant Quinlan and Rette Jones Racing (RJR) left a race track together, they celebrated a career-best third place ARCA Menards Series finish for Quinlan in the season-opening race at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway.

Two months later, the band is back together again for Friday’s General Tire 200 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with the hope to duplicate the team’s performance in their second start of 2019.

Poised for his third career ARCA start, Quinlan will make his series’ debut at Talladega’s 2.66-mile superspeedway and while the track characteristics differ from Daytona, the fundamentals of restrictor plate racing remain similar and the Mooresville, N.C.-based team hopes the strategy will again play into their hands in the fourth race of the season.

“I’ve been looking forward to Talladega since the day after our finish at Daytona,” said Quinlan. “We started deep in the field at Daytona – but just raced our race and when it came to time to execute, we had a shot.

“Looking back, I wish I could have done some things differently. It might have helped – it might not, but as a race car driver – you’re always wanting to improve and wanting more hoping to get that opportunity to get to Victory Lane. Hopefully, we can get it done on Friday for all these guys at Rette Jones Racing.”

Quinlan, a native of Maidstone, Ontario Canada has made 12 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East starts with RJR and while the 20-year-old delivered the veteran team their best K&N finish of second at Columbus Motor Speedway in 2015, Quinlan would like to deliver RJR their first career ARCA win – which would surpass co-team owner Terry Jones’ career-best ARCA finish of second last February at Daytona.

“Terry (Jones) and Mark (Rette) have given me plenty of opportunities and I’m appreciative of that,” added Quinlan. “They have given me the chance to drive some good equipment. Sure, we haven’t always had the best results, but we’ve given it everything we’ve can and most of the time, our efforts have paid off.

“Talladega could be one of those races where everything goes right or the complete opposite. We’ll see where we qualify and then just plan to strategize from there. Mark will be on the box and that will be huge. I don’t have any other races planned at this point right now, so taking advantage of Talladega is pivotal to me.”

2009 ARCA championship crew chief Rette says he was impressed with Quinlan’s ability on a restrictor plate track and feels he can easily showcase his potential again.

“We’ve been working on the car since Daytona looking for the opportunity to make the car better,” offered Rette. “I think we’ve made some good tweaks and hopefully it provides the chance to qualify up front and Grant can stay there.

“Timing will be crucial on Friday, as well as patience. If Grant can find the right drafting partners and stay out of trouble, we should have a good finish. Depending on how the cautions fall, he’ll only be on pit road once or twice, so we’ll do our job and then leave the rest up to him on the track.

“Looking forward to getting back to the ARCA track without a lot of pressure and going for the win.”

Jones Demolition & Abatement, International Tool and Mold and Priestly Demolition Inc. join Ford Performance, JRI Shocks, Huntilar Corp. and Goodridge Fluid Transfer Systems as associate marketing partners for the final superspeedway race of 2019.

In addition to ARCA and K&N, Quinlan is also a veteran of the ARCA | CRA Late Model Series.

The General Tire 200 (76 laps | 202 miles) is the fourth of 20 races on the 2019 ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards schedule. Practice begins Fri., Apr. 26 with an hour and twenty-five-minute session planned from 8:30 a.m. – 9:55 a.m. Group qualifying is set for later in the day at 2:35 p.m. The race in the 67th consecutive ARCA season is set to take the green flag later in the day shortly after 5:00 p.m. The event will be televised live on FOX Sports 1 (FS1), while ARCARacing.com will stream live timing and scoring throughout the day’s festivities. All times are local (Central).

The latest on Rette Jones Racing is available at RetteJonesRacing.com, the team’s Facebook page or Twitter @RetteJones30.

Quinlan also tweets. Follow him @GQuinlan28.

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