Raymond J. Ciccarelli (born January 20, 1970) is an American professional

stock car racing Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing run on oval tracks and road courses measuring approximately . It originally used production-model cars, hence the name "stock car", but is now run using cars specifically built for racing. It ori ...

driver. He last competed part-time in the

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is a pickup truck racing series owned and operated by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and is the only series in NASCAR to race production pickup truck based stock cars. The series is one of th ...

, driving the No. 49

Chevrolet Silverado The Chevrolet Silverado is a range of trucks manufactured by General Motors under the Chevrolet brand. Introduced for the 1999 model year, the Silverado is the successor to the long running Chevrolet C/K model line. Taking its name from th ...

for his own team, CMI Motorsports. He has also competed in what are now the ARCA Menards Series and

ARCA Menards Series East The ARCA Menards Series East (formerly Busch East Series, Busch North Series, Camping World East Series, and NASCAR K&N Pro Series East) is a regional stock car racing series owned and operated by the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) and ...

in the past.

Racing career

ARCA Racing Series

Ciccarelli drove part-time in the series in

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, and

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

for teams Carter 2 Motorsports, Kimmel Racing, Hamilton-Hughes Racing, and Hixson Motorsports. He started his own team, Ciccarelli Racing, for

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. The team's first race came in the season-opener at Daytona where Ciccarelli finished 21st in his No. 38 Ford after a solid seventh-place qualifying run. The team returned at Talladega, although they used owner points from the full-time Hixson Motorsports No. 3 car to have a better shot of qualifying for the race (which they successfully did). Using that number instead of the No. 38 (which had only run Daytona), they picked up a thirteenth-place finish in the race. Ciccarelli had driven for the Hixson team in a few races in 2016.

Truck Series

In 2017, Ciccarelli made his Truck Series debut in the Eldora Dirt Derby, driving the No. 10 truck for Jennifer Jo Cobb Racing. He started 32nd and finished 22nd. After that, he start-and-parked the No. 0 truck for the same team in 4 races at Michigan, New Hampshire, Texas, and Phoenix. He finished 26th, 29th, 28th, and 26th respectively. He returned to the No. 10 truck at Homestead. He qualified 31st, but an engine malfunction before the green flag waved gave him a 32nd-place finish. In 2019, Ciccarelli acquired trucks, equipment, and owner points from the closed Premium Motorsports No. 49 truck and restarted his own team, now under the name CMI Motorsports, which stood for "Ciccarelli Moving & Installation", a company owned by Ciccarelli and which is one of the team's sponsors. After running the first two races of the season, Ciccarelli and the CMI Motorsports team skipped the third round at Las Vegas with a planned comeback for the fourth round at Martinsville.

Planned departure from NASCAR announcement

Ciccarelli made headlines in June 2020 when he announced his retirement from NASCAR as a driver and a team owner at the end of the 2020 season. His announcement, which came in the form of a post on his Facebook page on June 10, was made on the same day as NASCAR's decision to ban the display of the Confederate flag from their events, a decision they made in the midst of the George Floyd protests due to the flag's longtime association with

white supremacist groups White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. W ...

. While many NASCAR drivers praised the ban, Ciccarelli decried it, as he believed that it and other recent decisions by the sanctioning body ventured into the realm of politics. However, Ciccarelli's team, CMI Motorsports, would post on their Twitter account on October 30 that ''"We're not done yet. See you all in 2021."'', which indicated that he would not close down his team after the 2020 season as planned. On November 19, when it was revealed on TobyChristie.com that Tim Viens would continue as a driver for CMI, Ciccarelli told the website that he planned on driving in three to four races in 2021, and therefore cancelling his plans to retire as a driver.

Motorsports career results

NASCAR

(

key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (map ...

) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. ''Italics'' – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)

Camping World Truck Series

Busch East Series

ARCA Racing Series

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ciccarelli, Ray Living people 1970 births ARCA Menards Series drivers NASCAR drivers People from Ellicott City, Maryland Racing drivers from Baltimore Racing drivers from Maryland