The ARCA championship ended in dramatic fashion at Kansas, but the celebrations were quickly overshadowed by a heated fallout between teammates from Nitro Motorsports.
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While Jake Bollman accused Thomas Annunziata of intentionally wrecking him and said he would not speak to him again, the newly crowned champion pushed back strongly, insisting he was not responsible for his teammate losing the title.
During the post-race media interaction, Annunziata shared his side of the story. In a clip seen on X, he argues that Bollman cannot completely portray himself as the victim. “But he’s not innocent. I mean, he’s run into me a lot this year. I mean, Duqoin, the last, the last laps of Duqoin with eight to go, I was running, I was on the outside row and he thought it was funny to floor it 60 feet before the finish line, trying to push me ahead of Carson Brown to get me a penalty.”
Annunziata also referenced the qualifying battle between the teammates as further evidence for his argument. And according to him, he has been the better of the two drivers based on pure speed.
“Well, he’s gotten into me most of the time, especially since we’ve outqualified them, you know, 13 weeks straight. You know, he’s never in front of me. He’s usually behind me. So he runs into me. So that’s a bit unfortunate.”
The two teammates tussled with each other right from the get-go. Early in the race, the two drivers were racing for the third spot and they got tangled. On lap 16, Bollman’s No. 20 car made a sharp move, hugging the bottom, while Annunziata’s No. 70 opted for the high lane. Both of them split the lap car and entered the corner, making contact. Annunziata spun, but this wasn’t the end of this tussle.
Just a few laps later, on lap 24, Annunziata returned the favor to his teammate, sending him for a spin. And yet somehow, this wasn’t the crash that decided the championship. After lap 40, Will Kimmel spun ahead of Bollman and collected the No. 20. Bollman had no time to react and crashed hard into Kimmel, then was hit again by the oncoming car of Austin Vaughn.
However, despite the incident, the newly crowned champion said he still respected Jake and was concerned about him after the crash, but he also dismissed any opinions suggesting he was responsible for his teammate falling out of title contention.
“I have a lot of respect for him. He’s done a great job this year. I was hoping he was okay, especially after that hit. I saw, I watched the whole thing and it’s unfortunate, but he doesn’t want to talk to me. That’s fine. But I think that’s a bit silly because I’m not the reason why he lost the championship tonight.”
Annunziata won his first ARCA Series championship on a tiebreaker. Bollman and Annunziata finished with a total of 947 points after the checkered flag dropped in Kansas. Bollman didn’t have a single win across the season, and this came back to haunt him.
Thanks to Annunziata’s sole win at Lime Rock Park, he bagged the title. And that was the difference maker in the end when it came to deciding the championship. Not to forget, the driver of the No. 20 car had a 16-point advantage heading into the race, and all of that got undone because of the run-ins with his teammate.
It also goes to show that team dynamics and chemistry can quickly vanish, especially when there is a championship on the line. Unfortunately for Bollman, he found himself on the losing end of this battle.