Mason Mingus Captures Career-First Pole at Mobile

(MOBILE, Ala.) – Mason Mingus captured his first-ever Menards Pole Award presented by Ansell Friday and will start up front for Saturday’s ARCA Mobile 200.

The ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards race will go green at 2 p.m.

Mingus, 18, driving the Diamond Equipment-811 Call Before You Dig Toyota, turned his qualifying lap at Mobile International Speedway in 17.634 seconds, just ahead of Grant Enfinger, who came in at 17.656. Those two will start up front.

“This is outstanding,” Mingus said of taking the pole. “We were strong all day long.”

Behind the Brentwood, Tenn. driver in the second row will be a pair of 15-year-olds in Anderson Bowen and Kyle Benjamin, who qualified third and fourth.

“I wasn’t quite sure we had the first place (qualifying) car,” Mingus said. “I was sweating it a little with Kyle still out there.”

Benjamin was one of the last to qualify, but came up a little short.

Enfinger, from nearby Fairhope, Ala., was happy with his qualifying laps.

“I thought we had a shot, but we didn’t come here to win the pole, we came here to win the race,” Enfinger said.

Qualifying mostly resembled Friday’s two practice sessions. Enfinger was fastest in the first session with Benjamin and Bowen topping the charts in the second.

Others that were solid all day included Taylor Ferns and Frank Kimmel. Those two will start in the third row. Ferns will be making her first-ever ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards start.

Josh Williams, Tom Hessert, Justin Boston and Spencer Gallagher round out the top 10 starters. A total of 27 cars will be in the field.

Only a few incidents occurred during Friday practice and qualifying sessions. Bo Lemastus crashed during his qualifying lap.

On Saturday, pre-race festivities begin at noon with an on-the-track autograph session. Driver introductions will be around 1:30 with the race scheduled to go green at 2 p.m.

For those not at the track, live timing and scoring and the radio call of the race is available on arcaracing.com.