As the 2022 racing season starts to wind down, the points battles across the three premier touring series under the NASCAR Roots banner are starting to come to a boil.

The points gap across the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, ARCA Menards Series and NASCAR Pinty’s Series are all either single digits or less.

We’ll start with the NASCAR Pinty’s Series, which saw its dirt debut at Ohsweken Speedway on Tuesday night end in spectacular fashion. Canada’s premier stock car division now sees Marc-Antoine Camirand and D.J. Kennington tied atop the standings with 385 points each.

The Pinty’s Series, which has provided drama on the race track at every stop of the season, has just three races left in 2022. Up next is a stop to the former runways at Montreal-Mirabel International Airport, the road course known as Circuit ICAR, on Saturday, August 27. After that, it’s a second trip to Bowmanville, Ontario’s Canadian Tire Motorsports Park on Sunday, September 4, and then the season will conclude on the short track of Delaware Speedway in Delaware, Ontario on Sunday, September 25.

That takes us to the ARCA Menards Series, where two teammates have been locked in a season-long slugfest to decide the champion.

Rev Racing teammates Nick Sanchez and Rajah Caruth are separated by just seven points with eight races remaining. And Daniel Dye isn’t far behind the two of them, either. Dye is nine points out of the lead and just two points behind Caruth for second.

The deciding factor so far has been Sanchez’s three victories at Talladega, Kansas and Michigan, while Caruth and Dye both have yet to visit victory lane this season. Caruth and Dye both have more top five finishes and more top 10 finishes than Sanchez, but the victories have given Sanchez the edge he’s needed so far this season.

However, there’s still plenty of time for things to get weird, especially over the upcoming stretch of races that includes a road course at Watkins Glen International this weekend, a short track, and two dirt races over the next four races.

And then there’s the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, which sees Ron Silk holding a slim four-point advantage over Jon McKennedy with six races remaining on the calendar.

Silk leads the series in top five and top 10 finishes with six and nine, respectively, but has yet to visit victory lane with his first-year team led by multi-time championship winning crew chief, Phil Moran.

But McKennedy has found victory lane, doing so last time out at New Hampshire’s Claremont Motorsports Park at the end of July.

Fortunately, for Silk, the Tour now heads to Connecticut’s Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park on Thursday, August 18, a track where the 2011 champion has five victories in 55 starts.

Silk and McKennedy need to stay on their toes, however, as Eric Goodale, Justin Bonsignore, and Tommy Catalano are lurking not that far behind.

NASCAR on Dirt

On Tuesday night, the NASCAR Pinty’s Series made its inaugural start on a dirt surface at Ontario’s Ohsweken Speedway. The race proved to be thrilling throughout, with drivers often going three-wide, and sometimes even four and five-wide to make passes.

Restarts were chaotic, and the finish was spectacular with Treyten Lapcevich using a textbook bump-and-run to get the lead back from NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series regular and Big Block Modified ace, Stewart Friesen. Friesen had just taken the lead from Lapcevich out of turn two before Lapcevich put the bumper to him one corner later. The lead changed hands twice on the final lap. Like we said, it was thrilling stuff from a series that has put on thrilling races all season long.

Tuesday’s race at Ohsweken Speedway continued a trend of seeing NASCAR stock cars racing on dirt. The NASCAR Cup Series has raced on a dirt-covered Bristol Motor Speedway each of the last two years, while the Camping World Trucks Series has been running at least one dirt race since 2013, with races at Eldora Speedway, Bristol, and the Knoxville Raceway.

The NASCAR K&N Pro Series West (now the ARCA Menards Series West) has even raced a couple of times on dirt at the Dirt Track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2018 and 2019.

And the ARCA Menards Series has been racing on dirt miles at DuQuoin and Springfield for years, with that tradition set to resume on August 21 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds, and September 4 at the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds.

In 2021, Corey Heim took the victory at Springfield, while Landen Lewis scored the win at DuQuoin. In 2020, it was Ryan Unzicker scoring the victory at Springfield. Michael Self won at the Springfield dirt in 2019, while Christian Eckes won at DuQuoin, and in 2018 it was Eckes again winning a dirt race, this time at Springfield, and Logan Seavey who scored the win at DuQuoin.

National Championship Battle Heating Up

For a little while there it looked as though Layne Riggs was going to run away with the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship, but after this past weekend’s racing, suddenly things are starting to tighten up once again.

Defending national champion Peyton Sellers scored two victories last weekend, sweeping the twin features at Virginia’s Dominion Raceway. The wins helped Sellers close the gap by 10 points, while Riggs was away running his second NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series race at Richmond Raceway on Saturday night. Now, the gap is 24 points from Riggs to Sellers.

But, not too far behind them are two dirt Modified drivers from Pennsylvania’s Grandview Speedway. Craig Von Dohren is third overall with 524 points, 50 behind Riggs, and Brett Kressley is fourth with 514 points. Von Dohren and Kressley have each made 19 starts to Riggs’ 29 and Sellers’ 25 so far in 2022.

The national championship points structure uses a driver’s best 18 finishes from any NASCAR-sanctioned track in North America to determine the national champion. Drivers receive two points for every NASCAR-licensed competitor they finish ahead of, up to position 16, in a race. And, they also receive two bonus points for winning a race in which they started in positions five through eight, and a four-point bonus for a winning a race in which they started ninth or deeper in the field.

The final day for the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series points structure is Saturday, September 18.

National Championship Points

 NASCAR Roots On FloRacing This Week

Thursday

8 p.m. ET – NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park

Friday

6:30 p.m. ET – Modifieds at Autodrome Granby

8:30 p.m. ET – Idaho 208 Night One at Meridian Speedway

Saturday

5:30 p.m. ET – NASCAR Modifieds Bubba 150 at Riverhead Raceway

6:30 p.m. ET – Late Models and Modifieds at Jennerstown Speedway

6:30 p.m. ET – NASCAR Weekly Racing at Berlin Raceway

7 p.m. ET – Late Model Stock Cars at South Boston Speedway

7 p.m. ET – Late Model Stock Cars at Langley Speedway

7:30 p.m. ET – NASCAR Weekly Racing at Florence Motor Speedway

7:50 p.m. ET – Championship Night at Bowman Gray Stadium

8:30 p.m. ET – Idaho 208 Night Two at Meridian Speedway

9:30 p.m. ET – ARCA Menards Series West at Evergreen Speedway

10 p.m. ET – NASCAR Weekly Racing at Alaska Raceway Park

Sunday

2 p.m. ET – ARCA Menards Series at Illinois State Fairgrounds