When Tyler Reif won the General Tire 150 at Phoenix Raceway, he not only captured his first career ARCA Menards Series and ARCA Menards Series West victory. He also captured the first win for his team Lowden-Jackson Motorsports.
Team co-owner Chris Lowden had the utmost confidence in Reif, despite Reif falling two laps down after he was spun on lap 12. Lowden termed the spin, which came from Sean Hingorani, a racing situation.
“It was exciting,” Lowden told Frontstretch. “After we won on Friday, we woke up on Saturday and thought, ‘OK, let’s get ready for Pensacola.’ So we’ve been more pragmatic about it. In Phoenix, we had some bad luck, we had some good luck and some other teams had some bad luck as well. We just were able to put it together. We had a fast car, no doubt. The No. 18 [William Sawalich] is always challenging. He had a little bad luck; we were able to take advantage of that. Our car was pretty fast, our crew did a great job getting it back out in a timely fashion after the lap 12 situation.”
The race featured two overtimes, one of which saw leader Sawalich spin. On the final restart, Landen Lewis appeared to prematurely jump it. Lowden never wavered in his confidence in Reif, partly because he knew how fast Reif’s No. 41 was.
In fact, the talented 15-year-old driver led the Phoenix practice session on scuffed tires.
“In that moment, I had a lot of confidence in Tyler,” Lowden said. “I felt he could pull it off. The last restart didn’t work out in our favor but knowing Tyler, he gets up on the wheel. He’s not lying down for anything. I just watched him for the last two laps and thought, ‘Wow.’”
The win was the first for the organization, but it was not Lowden’s first racing victory. The bearded 58-year-old from Las Vegas won the 1999 super late model championship at The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Twenty-four years later, life is a little different for Lowden. He overcame cancer and he expanded his family’s entrepreneurial enterprises from casinos to a country bar called Stoney’s Rockin’ Country, often a sponsor for his two drivers, and a jazz Italian restaurant named Vic’s Las Vegas.
His love of racing never changed though, as he stated, “It’s kind of like riding a bike, only faster.”
The 2023 season is different for him, though. Rather than continue running regularly in the West, Lowden chose to expand the team to two full-time entries. Reif…
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