Somewhat under the radar, the first points-paying NASCAR sanctioned race of the 2025 season took place at Kern County Raceway in Bakersfield, California on Saturday where the ARCA West Series delivered a barnburner of a finish.
Trevor Huddleston had taken the lead from pole sitter Daniel Hemric, making his debut for Bill McAnally in advance of their Truck Series campaign together, and led every lap of the way. Hemric lost a lap dropping a slow pace from the start of the race.
In the closing laps, Hemric showed his hand, that he was intentionally saving tire life the entire race and charged all the way up to third behind Huddleston and Kyle Keller. Hemric then fell off the pace with seven laps to go with some kind of mechanical issue leaving Huddleston and Keller to race each other through some lapped traffic.
“Definitely just want to say hats off to Kyle Keller over here,” Huddleston said. “I mean that’s how you race a race. He ran it perfect and he didn’t use me up at all. He was going for that win and he just got unlucky that car was there. I saw that in my windshield and I knew I had to do what I had to do. He did a great job.”
Keller agreed it was important to have a clean finish.
“I respect Trevor and wanted to race him clean,” Kelley said. “Could have had a photo finish there. I got behind that lap car and was like, I may need to take a right here, so I took a right there. It was either stuff him in the fence or dog it out to the end. We dogged it out to the end.
“I’m never going to race him dirty; happy he got the win and we’re going to race each other for the championship this way all year.”
