(Photo: Barry Cantrell)
By Aaron Bearden
It’s been four months since Michael Self narrowly lost out on an ARCA Menards Series title.
They’ve been filled with thoughts of what could have been.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend a good bit of time sulking after Kansas,” Self told Motorsports Beat. “That was a tough loss for me.”
Self entered the stretch run of the 2019 ARCAA season eying his first major stock car championship. A run of six top-fives kept him ahead of hard-charging teammate Christian Eckes heading into the final month of the year, but a 14th-place run at Salem Speedway opened the door for Eckes to join the battle.
Eckes quickly took advantage. He tallied seven-consecutive top-two finishes to close the year and surged past Self to claim the championship despite missing a race.
The margin for Self – 25 points… And a heartbreaking loss in the finale.
“The tough thing about it was when I look back at last year as a whole, we had 75 points in penalties and then we had, handful of races that we DNF’d from due to mechanical issues,” Self said. “Despite all that, through all that, it came to Kansas (Speedway), which was one of my best tracks.
“We had a shot to go win it and we had a great car that night, could have won the championship, led the most laps.
“Honestly, it kinda just came down to one restart where I chose the bottom and I should have taken the top. With my speedway experience – I feel like I had a lot more of than Christian – I know that, but we’d been so good on the bottom… I made that decision and it ultimately ended up biting me.”
That loss stung Self for a long time.
“After Kansas I kinda just dug myself into a little bit of a hole,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about that one decision that I made. That cost me.”
The Utah native had enjoyed strong seasons in the past, winning eight races in three NASCAR K&N Pro Series seasons earlier in the 2010s. But he’d never been as close to a title as he came in 2019. That haunted him… And he wasn’t even sure if he would get a chance to redeem himself.
Heading into the holiday season, Self didn’t think he had a full-time ride for 2020. He and sponsor Sinclair seemed destined for a part-time schedule with Venturini Motorsports. But over the winter an opportunity for a full-time return presented itself.
Sinclair agreed to support the effort after the holiday break, and Self signed on for a full year in January.
“I actually got kind of a revamped energy because of it,” Self said of the deal. ”It was cool for me to come off something as hard as Kansas last year and see that these people around me are putting all this focus and all this effort into making a full season a possibility again.
“It’s easy to think of yourself as a loser, but to see everyone kind of rally around that I think has given me a completely rejuvenated energy. So I’m as excited about this year as I have been for any that I can remember.”
Self will be positioned to succeed. The 29-year-old’s returning to a team he’s won six races for in his past 30 starts, and he’ll be paired with crew chief Kevin Reed – a former partner and the man that beat him with Eckes last fall.
He’ll also benefit from a schedule that’s more to his liking. ARCA’s schedule was shaken up as part of the combination with the former K&N East and West tours, with the addition of tracks like Bristol Motor Speedway, Phoenix Raceway and, key for Self, road courses in Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and Watkins Glen International.
“I’ve been wanting to go ARCA road racing for years now,” Self said. “I’m just dying to run an ARCA car on a road course and haven’t had that opportunity since I didn’t get the chance to run it in Road America a couple of years ago. That’s been the biggest thing I felt the schedule was missing. So those two races are definitely circled on my calendar.”
Self has history at tracks like Phoenix, where he’s won before. But more key for him than the tracks added on the oval side are the ones ARCA removed.
“I frankly wasn’t crazy about (Fairgrounds Speedway) Nashville,” Self said. “I tell people all the time (that) I don’t think of myself as much of a short track racer, but we’re able to have pretty good success on the short tracks.
“Last year we went to some tracks that really weren’t my favorite like Toledo (Speedway), Nashville… Those getting removed from the schedule are kind of the best thing that could happen to me.”
Reaching ARCA’s top step in 2020 won’t be easy. New competitors are stepping up, and the changed rules package will see cars with less horsepower – a move Self says will affect intermediate tracks and feels “almost like taking a step back,” though he understands it.
Perhaps because of that, Self won’t go so far as to say he has to win the ARCA championship in 2020 to be content.
Instead his main focus is to eliminate the issues that plagued him in 2019.
“I think the big thing for me is just avoiding the things that I feel cost us the championship last year,” Self said. “The penalties and the DNFs… You know, that’s what ultimately took us out of it. That’s something that has to be totally cleaned up this year.
“Those things happen in racing, but we have to do our job as a team. I have to do my job as a driver, taking care of the equipment just as much as the crew guys have to do and making sure everything is solid and built how it needs to be. We all have to do that just to make sure that we avoid those kinds of situations.”
But while he doesn’t find a championship to be a must-win, Self acknowledged that a title could go a long way toward redeeming his close calls in the past.
“It would be hard to describe how big of a deal (a title) would be,” Self said. “It’s just been something that, for whatever reason, has been so hard for me to come by. Just look at last year.
“I look back to when I was K&N racing a couple years ago and just was never able to put everything together enough to win a championship. And that’s something I hold pretty harshly against myself.
“That’s something I want to overcome.”
