Dalton Sargeant ARCA Winner At Iowa Speedway

By Paul Gohde
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Updated: July 9, 2017

Newton, Iowa – Quick work by Dalton Sargeant’s pit crew, combined with a gritty last nine lap drive by the Florida driver, helped him capture the Fans With Benefits 150 ARCA Racing Series event Saturday night at the Iowa Speedway.

Sargeant edged Austin Theriault by 1.50 seconds after Sargeant’s crew got him out first after a late-race caution robbed the eventual winner of his seven second lead.

“That caution was the last thing I wanted to see,” explained the Cunningham Motorsports Ford driver. “It made me nervous to think about holding him (Theriault) off for nine more laps.”

Theriault, driving the Ken Schrader Ford, had a scare earlier in the day that threatened his race day. “We had a motor issue before practice, but the crew got it changed in an hour. We got behind a little,” said the Minnesota native who started fifth, “but we fought hard to catch up.”

Sheldon Cree, from Alpine California, led 11 laps in his United Rentals Toyota and finished third after starting 13th.

Michael Self came from his 10th grid spot to finish fourth, leading 33 laps despite suffering rear end damage to his Sinclair Oil Toyota after an early-race spin.

Pole-winner Shane Lee led the first 58 laps but fell back after the first round of pit stops and faded to an 11th-place finish in his Big Tine Ford.

Sargeant was happy with the win, but still gave almost full credit to his crew who allowed him to get out of the pits first at the final caution and have that valuable lane choice. “My guys executed that last pit stop perfectly. The lane (outside on the restart) moved up where I thought I was at my best.”

And Saturday night that may have been the winning move.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

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