ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Justin Lofton came all the way from the back of the field to finish third, good enough to hold off Parker Kligerman by five points to win the ARCA championship in the season finale Sunday at Rockingham Speedway.
Kligerman led 66 laps and won the American 200, but his effort wasn't quite enough to take the title away from Lofton. It was the third-closest final margin in the 56-year history of the series, including a tie in 1974 that led to co-champions.
"I really wanted to win this race, it would have meant a lot to win a race at The Rock,"' Lofton said. "But to win a championship here means even more."
Lofton essentially won the title with his superior qualifying record this season: in ARCA, the pole-sitter gets 15 points, with 10 points going to the driver who qualifies second and five points given for third. When he ran the second-fastest lap in qualifying at Rockingham, Lofton gained 10 more points and saw his advantage increase to 25 points, giving him a total of 110 "bonus" points during the 21-race schedule.
Kligerman finished with only 45 and qualified fourth for this one.
"I think it's a bad thing," Kligerman said. "The championship is over a race, not qualifying. It was bigger than racing, it means so much more than the actual race. I didn't like that."
Following Lofton's qualifying run on Saturday, his crew was forced to change the engine in his Toyota, relegating him to the rear of the 41-car field. He methodically worked his way to the front, and although he never led a lap, he remained in the top five for much of the last half of the race.
He drove conservatively until the final lap, when he closed on Casey Roderick for the runner-up spot. Lofton drove to the inside of Roderick's Dodge in Turn 1, and the two cars made contact before Lofton's slipped sideways for an instant.
He regained control and trailed Roderick to the finish line.
"I was really getting greedy," Lofton said. "I saw an opportunity, I thought my car was a little better. Thank him for his good driving, he could have wrecked us both there."
The 17-year-old Roderick, a protege of NASCAR star Bill Elliott, made his first ARCA start and joined Lofton at the back of the field when he stopped shortly after the cars rolled off the grid to rearrange his steering wheel. He ultimately led 14 laps before finishing second.
"It was good experience for me, I passed every single car on the race track," Roderick said. "On the long run, we had the best car out there."
NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader was fourth, followed by Clay Rogers.
A red flag stopped the race on lap 156, when 75-year-old James Hylton crashed on the backstretch. Hylton, the 1966 Rookie of the Year in what is now called the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, was alert and conscious when transported to a hospital for observation.
