JACKSONVILLE, NC – Veteran racer and spotter Robert Arch will kick off a busy weekend by competing in the Ronnie Hetu Memorial Mini Stock race at New River All American Speedway on Friday night.
Arch, 34, from Garner, North Carolina, is a former Charger division champion at Southern National Motorsports Park and has been a formidable competitor in any discipline of racing he has run. He now spends most of his weekends as a spotter for various drivers and teams, but he is taking advantage of the opportunity to compete on the eve of the zMAX CARS Tour race in hopes of getting back to victory lane.
“If we don’t win, I’ll be disappointed,” Arch said. “A lot of time and money has gone into this thing. Since I don’t get to race as much, it makes me hungrier to win because I don’t get to as much. It’s always rewarding when I can show up and win without getting to race much.”
Arch is no stranger to the short tracks of Eastern North Carolina, but Friday night will make the first time he’s raced at New River since 2008 – winning at the track in his first year racing. He won multiple championships in the U-CAR division at Wake County Speedway in Raleigh, North Carolina in the years after before moving up to the Charger division where he was a dominant force at Southern National.
After winning a Charger division feature at Southern National while driving part-time in 2017, Arch said, “I’m still king around here when it comes to these Charger cars.”
The year prior, he had won championships in the Charger division at both Southern National and Wake County in a comeback season after being injured in a workplace accident on June 11, 2014. It was during that downtime that he started spotting for friends and other racers.
“The spotting thing just kind of happened,” Arch said. “I was helping friends race when I wasn’t racing and they needed spotters, so I filled in. I started spotting for Bradley McCaskill for years and it slowly progressed from there with more and more people calling needing a spotter. Now, I get to travel all over the country racing and spotting, and still get to be involved in the sport I love. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be driving, but with how expensive it is, it’s just not in the cards to be a full-time racer.”
In 2020, Arch was the spotter for Josh Berry, who now competes full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, helping guide the JR Motorsports Late Model Stock Car team to the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series National Championship.
Arch does hope to race more often but enjoys his current role.
This weekend, he will get the best of both worlds as he will be the spotter for Kevin Harvick, Inc. driver Landen Lewis in the zMAX CARS Tour, Matt Bussa in the Grand National Super Series, and will spot for another driver in the Street Stock race on Friday night as well as in the Legend Car division on Saturday.
“I don’t really have any goals because I don’t know when I’ll get to race,” Arch explained. “I’d love to one day run the Snowflake Pro Late Model race at Five Flags but that will probably never happen because of the cost involved. Just being able to stay involved and have drivers of the quality I spot for using me is enough for me. It’s very rewarding to know that just a redneck from Johnston County is helping develop kids/drivers that are now making their way through the ranks of NASCAR’s top-three series.”
Friday night’s Ronnie Hetu Memorial will go green at 8:00pm and will feature a 50-lap, $1,000-to-win Mini Stock race, Street Stocks, Rumblers (formerly called U-CARs), and Bombers. The Ronnie Hetu Memorial will serve as an appetizer leading into the National Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram 250 on Saturday night, which is headlined by the zMAX CARS Tour and Grand National Super Series.
New River All-American Speedway is Jacksonville’s Action Attraction featuring racing and other events. For more information about New River All-American Speedway, check out the speedway’s website, like/follow “New River Speedway” on Facebook and/or follow @newriverswy on X (formerly known as Twitter).
