Larry Clement, Owner With More Titles Than Richard Childress

One of the most accomplished drivers in the ARCA Menards Series of the past 20 years is Frank Kimmel. During his run in ARCA, Kimmel won nine ARCA championships in a 10-year span from 1998 to 2007; all with team owner Larry Clement.

Clement owned an ARCA car from the mid ’90s all the way up to 2009 when Matt Carter ran two races for Clement’s team. Clement scored 71 wins in 303 starts in the ARCA Menards Series as an owner and finished in the top 10 in over 70% of his starts.

In part one of this interview, Clement recants his beginnings in auto racing and the flip that secured sponsorship from Advance Auto Parts.

Part two of this interview is scheduled to be released tomorrow.

Jared Haas, Frontstretch: You had quite a few drivers, especially early in your career that were in the Midwest. How did you know, meet and recruit those drivers to drive for you?

Larry Clement: Well, actually, I did a deal with Howard Mellinger when I was in Fort Dodge. Howard Mellinger owned a company called Jim Dandy Printing. He had a racecar that he owned that they wanted me to sponsor that Bob Hill drove, a late model, top-of-the-line model. I said I got two questions. “Is it fast?” and, “Will we win?” And he said, “Yeah, we won races. We finished second in the championship last year in Hamilton County.” And I said, “Well, then let’s do it. I’ll sponsor you and I expect to move up one notch.”

We won the track championship there five years in a row and a championship at Mason City [Motor Speedway]. We took the program out a little bit from there and ran in that world of NASCAR [which] had a touring series called the Busch All-Star Series. We won that championship in ’93. Bob was an absolutely great driver. [On] how we got into ARCA racing, I took the team down [to] the spring NASCAR race at Talladega [Superspeedway]. The day before we were sitting on the pit wall after the ARCA race. We’re watching cars go around about 200 miles an hour [in] ARCA cars.

I walked down to Bob Babb and Mark Ludwig [who] are longtime crew chiefs [and] was there with a couple other guys after the ARCA race. I said, “You better get ready. I’m gonna get one of these. I think we can do this.” I don’t know if they thought I was crazy. There we are running half-mile dirt tracks although Bob [Hill] won a race at Indianapolis on a mile track in a dirt late model and ran good everywhere we went. That’s how we decided to get into ARCA racing.

Haas: How long did you…