Sammy Smith has started off his ARCA Menards Series East championship defense the best way possible, by winning each of the first two races in 2022. Smith drove to the victory at Central Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway last month, and backed up that win with a victory on Saturday night in the Florida Panhandle at Pensacola’s Five Flags Speedway.

The win didn’t come easy for the 17-year-old driver from Iowa as he had to deal with multiple cautions and restarts as the laps wound down. The final restart came with just 11 laps remaining.

Smith got a great jump and was able to drive away from Leland Honeyman, who held off Taylor Gray for second place.

“I felt like we kind of struggled early,” said Smith in victory lane. “I think I did a better job managing my stuff this year than I did last year.”

Honeyman started Saturday’s Pensacola 200 from the pole position, and led the first 27 laps before eventually finishing second in as many starts with the series.

“It was a great race,” said Honeyman. “Good job to Sammy Smith on the win. I think we did have a shot to win it there at the end. Just came up a little bit short, but this is really cool.” 

Gray was one of the strongest cars all evening, but he lost the lead to Smith for good with 27 laps to go and was never able to get it back. In the end, an apparent restart violation penalty on the penultimate restart ended his bid at a win. Instead of restarting in second for the final 11 laps, Gray was forced to start in sixth. He rebounded back to the podium to eventually finish in third.

“We were fast. I feel like we had that one stolen away from us pretty bad, but we’ll take it on the chin and move on to Dover and try to have a strong run there. We really needed to get to second to kind of stay close to (Smith) in the points, but we’ll go to Dover and be fast.”

Daniel Escoto and Willie Mullins completed the top five.

The ARCA Menards Series East is back in action on April 29^th at Delaware’s Dover Motor Speedway live on FloRacing.