18-Year-Old Sean Hingorani Makes It Back-to-Back ARCA West Championships

• Sean Hingorani repeats ARCA Menard West title, Connor Zilisch Edges William Sawalich For Race Trophy.

• Team-switching champion fires salvo at one of his 2024 bosses, says he's unsure of 2025 plans.

The focus of Friday’s Desert Diamond Casino West Valley 100 was on the ARCA Menards West championship battle between reigning king Sean Hingorani and Tyler Reif. But the Phoenix Raceway battle between polesitter and 2023 winner William Sawalich and victor Connor Zilisch stole the show.

Then, after Hingorani, 18, secured his second championship in as many seasons with his third-place finish for Venturini Motorsports, he raised eyebrows for an accusatory remark about one of his previous team bosses this season.

With that, he said he’s “still trying to figure out” the next step in his career: “I don't have anything in line right now, but hopefully we'll be able to put something together and announce it soon.” But it’s a safe bet it won’t involve Shigeaki Hattori, of HRE (Hattori Racing Enterprises).

“It’s been a long season with a lot of different people that have helped me get to this point. I want to thank Venture Motorsport for everything they've done for me. It was harder this year, acclimating every week to a different team,” Hingorani said. “We had a couple of things fall apart coming into this year, and it put us in a bad spot. Then we decided to run the HRE car, and then he [Hattori] ended up taking our sponsor's money and left us in a bad spot again. We had a whole season planned out across all our platforms and just didn't bring a car to the racetrack one day. So we had to figure it out. We were able to find some people that are helping us out and put us in this position again.”

Repeated attempts to reach a representative of Hattori Racing Enterprises were unsuccessful.

He said, “It feels pretty good to get back-to-back championships. It was a struggle this year trying to find different seats every week, week in, week out. But we executed really well. We only had one mechanical failure. Other than that, I think we were in the top five of every race. So I feel like we had some strong runs and we put together a really strong year.”

Hingorani had to finish ninth or better Friday to earn the championship.

Meanwhile, Zilisch celebrated his successful first visit to Phoenix Raceway, savoring his seventh victory in 12 races for Pinnacle Racing Group. Just as he did in the opening laps of the race, Zilich raced fellow 18-year-old Sawalich door to door in a five-lap sprint to the finish (following the day’s third caution) before opening a comfortable gap on the runner-up during the final three laps.

Zilisch, a development driver for Trackhouse Racing who’s anticipating a fulltime ride in 2025 for JR Motorsports, called his 2024 “a really good season for us and just really glad to end it on a good note.” He wasn’t done for the day – in a matter of an hour or so, he was participating in Xfinity Series practice, prepping for Saturday night’s race in that series.

“If I had been here before, it would probably be a little bit different, but a track I've never been to this weekend's a little different because Xfinity has a long practice, but any laps I can get before I go out for Xfinity practice to kind of learn on the fly is helpful. Once I got out to a decent gap there, I was able to kind of change what I was doing and try and learn as much as I could to just experiment because it's a lot easier to experiment when you're leading a race than when it is you're battling in an Xfinity race,” he said. “It was good to get out there and feel that out while I could and just kind of take notes.”

Zilisch said his next race will be the Jan. 25-26 at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

“That's probably my favorite race of the year, so I'm going to try and do that one for as long as I can. That race is so much fun. No Snowball Derby or Chili Bowl or anything like that.”

Reif finished eighth in Friday’s event.