The ARCA Racing Series garage is preparing for its new NASCAR overlords.

OK, that’s a little dramatic, but change is looming on the horizon, even if no one is totally sure what that entails. NASCAR purchased the Midwest fourth-tier stock car series back in April but has yet to outline any plans to integrate it into a system that already has three national tours, two regional divisions and several international branches.

ARCA team owners are admittedly a little nervous about the looming change.

After all, they would choose to pursue their business in the K&N Pro Series if they wanted to work in NASCAR proper. Even though the cars are not radically different than its K&N counterparts, ARCA has a unique schedule, personality and culture that makes it totally different than anything else in stock car racing.

Of course, that was part of the appeal for NASCAR in acquiring it too.

The Midwest is an area of the country that has a rich stock car heritage that NASCAR officials will admit to not servicing as much as they could have over the past decade. Whatever it does with ARCA, now NASCAR has a foothold in the region.

But there are risks too.

Contrary to public perception anytime a business sells, ARCA wasn’t in financial peril. It was actually doing quite well and the crowd at a venue like Toledo Speedway in Ohio last month reflected it. These are the fans who need ARCA to look and feel different than ARCA and the current team owners are unanimous in echoing those hopes.

Mainstay team owner Billy Venturini teeters between optimism and trepidation -- a byproduct of the unknown.

"I hope this is a good thing for everyone," Venturini told Autoweek. "It makes me a little nervous because I've been here a long time. My whole life is tied up into what we have here. It's definitely a little bit of the unknown."

Mason Mitchell won the 2014 ARCA championship but then moved into the ownership role in advance of the 2017 season. Mitchell has the same general overview as Venturini.

"I'm optimistic about it," Mitchell said. "I think there's a bright future ahead for us. We're scared at the same time. It could be a good thing with the switchover. Right now, the ARCA Series as a whole is really good with the competition we provide."

For now, ARCA will remain unchanged through the 2019 season, at which point NASCAR will have decisions to make ranging from scheduling to the rule book.

"Our schedule is pretty fun to race," Mitchell said. "We have big tracks, short tracks and dirt tracks. I would like to keep the cool tracks we go to. We’ve done well with the Ilmor engine and composite body, so there’s not a lot that needs to be changed.

"NASCAR just needs to keep chipping away on things that will keep bringing fans to the track on the entertainment side."

One obvious thing NASCAR could do is completely merge the ARCA and K&N rulebooks. Both cars now have the same bodies and run on radial tires, but they have slightly different chassis and a completely different spec engine.

However, the new Camping World Truck Series spec engine is derived from the ARCA Ilmor engine, providing an opportunity for NASCAR to bring that over to K&N.

To that point, Venturini doesn’t mind a merging of the rulebooks, but he’s adamant that the ARCA rulebook should be universally adopted by both tours.

"I don’t care if we race with the K&N Series," Venturini said. "I feel like we’re a superior series to that series. If we’re going to run together, then we need to run on our rules package because it’s better racing, to be honest. I think, MDM is the best K&N team and now they’re running ARCA.

"So if we’re going to do that, I think it has to be with our package because it’s a better product on the track."

Mitchell doesn’t feel as strongly about it, one way or the other.

"I think ARCA has been growing over the last several years, and our package is really strong," Mitchell said. "But I don’t know what the right decision is, only because I know NASCAR is going to have a lot to look at."

With that in mind, both Venturini and Mitchell simply hope to have a roundtable conversation to hash out those possible decisions once NASCAR decides to start making them.

Tommy Praytor has served in a variety of capacities in ARCA -- from team owner, television personality and event promoter. It provides him an interesting perspective.

"At first, it will appear like business as usual," Praytor said. "The stalwart tracks in the heartland will remain on the schedule -- Salem, Toledo, etc. How can you have an ARCA season without Salem? What about the future? That’s where I think we run into trouble.

"Family teams like ours, Basham, Kimmel, Hylton, Peterson and Hixson are already in trouble, with Hixson ending his 20-year run a few weeks ago at Salem. Rule changes over the last few years have saved the funded teams millions while sky-rocketing cost for those of us on down the line. In my opinion, there needs to be a way forward for family teams that have a long-term commitment to the series versus 'here is my million dollars I’m headed to Cup' approach."

As for ARCA leadership, president Ron Drager says the league is healthy, but he can’t talk about 2019 and beyond yet. The reason probably has everything to do with the fact that it would be speculation anyway.

"I think Helton and France realized that Drager and his group are getting it done better and cheaper than their group in the glass tower," Praytor said. "Don’t mess with what’s working."

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