Kenny Wallace at the Gateway Dirt Nationals in St. Louis, November 2018. Photo: Mike Kalasnik via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Kenny Wallace named three of the six women who raced the ARCA Menards Series West round at Phoenix Raceway on Oct. 17, then told his viewers, “Now that’s as far as I could remember.” The one he left out, Mia Lovell, finished eighth.
The line is from a “Coffee with Kenny” episode Wallace posted to his YouTube channel and his X account the next morning under the title “Should ARCA Be The Women’s Series?” He filmed it in a $104-a-night hotel room in Lincoln, Illinois, where he was entered in the DIRTcar Fall Nationals at Lincoln Speedway. The part about women runs roughly three minutes of a video that is close to 11 minutes long. Most of the rest is about money in dirt racing.
After asking viewers not to make fun of him, Wallace made the pitch: “Maybe that’s the ladies series. Maybe ARCA is perfect to get them going.” His reasoning was that the next rungs are too steep. “Truck series, the O’Reilly series, hey, you might as well be in Cup,” he said, calling the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series “a big step for these ladies.”
What the results show
ARCA’s official results list 27 starters in the Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 100. Taylor Reimer finished second in Pinnacle Racing Group’s No. 82 Chevrolet, Hailie Deegan was sixth, Lovell eighth and Jade Avedisian ninth. Taylor Mayhew (13th) and Dystany Spurlock (14th) also finished on the lead lap, as did all six women.
Reimer took the lead from Max Reaves before the halfway break and got it back briefly in traffic near the end, according to ARCA’s race report. Reaves won when rain ended the race under caution after an overtime restart, giving Joe Gibbs Racing a win in its last ARCA event before the team closes the program. ARCA called second place Reimer’s best finish in its competition so far.
Wallace said he found out how the race went on X, a site he described as “totally toxic” before admitting it is good for highlights. A minute later he added, “Remember, I’m a girl dad. I have three daughters.”
The ladder Deegan already climbed
The sixth-place finisher has already done the route Wallace describes, in both directions. Racing-Reference’s records show Deegan made 70 starts across ARCA’s main, East and West series from 2018 to 2020, including a full 2020 ARCA season in which she ran 17 top-10s in 20 races and finished third in points.
Then she moved up. Deegan made 69 Truck Series starts from 2020 to 2023 with five top-10s and a best championship finish of 17th. She added 18 starts in what is now the O’Reilly series, 17 of them in AM Racing’s No. 15 Ford in 2024, without a top-10.
This year she is back in ARCA West with Bill McAnally Racing: 12 starts, one win, eight top-10s and fourth in the standings. Her record fits the part of Wallace’s argument about the size of the jump. It does not fit the idea that women racers are skipping ARCA. Deegan spent three seasons there first.
Wallace’s own apprenticeship was three seasons in the American Speed Association, 1986 through 1988, before a full Busch Series schedule in 1989. His niece Chrissy Wallace, his brother Mike’s daughter, made seven Truck starts in 2008 and 2009 and two Nationwide Series starts in 2010.
Who pays for the next step
The video never mentions budgets. Denny Hamlin said this week that four out of five O’Reilly Series drivers are paying to race, and that bill lands on the 21 men in Saturday’s Phoenix field the same way it lands on the six women. Sorting drivers into an ARCA “ladies series” would not change who can afford a Truck seat.
Wallace has stood up for women drivers before. In February he defended Natalie Decker when a Daytona wreck turned into an online pile-on. Three months later Decker walked away from her Truck team after Dover.
ARCA’s standing as a place to learn stock cars reaches past racing, too. This month Tom Cruise asked NASCAR for a real ARCA start before filming Days of Thunder 2. Nobody has suggested he stay there.
Wallace closed the segment by asking viewers to weigh in. By Thursday the YouTube upload had about 22,000 views and 118 comments. The X post had four replies.
The ARCA West season ends Oct. 31 with the NAPA Auto Parts 150 at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway, streaming on FloRacing at 7 p.m. PT. Deegan goes in fourth in points.
Should ARCA be the place women racers stay until they are ready for Trucks, or does a “ladies series” label miss a ladder that is mostly decided by money?
Sources: ARCA race report and official results, Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 100, Oct. 18, 2026; Kenny Wallace, “Should ARCA Be The Women’s Series?” on YouTube and X, Oct. 18, 2026; Racing-Reference driver statistics for Hailie Deegan and Chrissy Wallace.
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