Meet ARRA Historian Jeff Zimmerman!!

Ringoes,NJ – Auto Racing Research Associates – ARRA, is comprised of 45 auto racing historians spread across the United States, up into Canada and even overseas in Great Brittain. Their experience in racing and their fields of expertise span the spectrum of auto racing. With literally hundreds of subjects researched and documented on their popular auto racing statistics website, there is always the need for fact checking and cross checking to assure that the stats they provide are as accurate as possible! Television broadcast stations, newspaper columnists, reporters and feature writers all use the website as a source of information when needed and this begs that the statistics be as perfect as possible. ARRA has taken steps to help in assuring that that is the case.

 Pennsylvania’s Jeff Zimmerman….a long time ARRA historian has been one of ARRA’s “behind the scenes” workers who helps to assure the accuracy of the groups facts and statistics regarding much of the Northeast racing. Jeff’s early beginnings in the sport, got started early in his life. “I began attending races with my parents in 1985 when I was 6 years old, going to Penn National and Big Diamond to watch my godfather, Art Bair, race in the street stock class.” Jeff says of his initial introduction to the sport. Before long, he was beginning to build his archive of stats. “ I always bought programs and when the tracks started posting different stats on their websites, I would print out the wins, big race winners, and champions lists.” 

 Life went on and he became an IT professional and dabbled in building his own databases of racing stats, eventually hooking up with another eventual ARRA historian Dennis Clapperton, Son of former Southern Tier driving star Mike Clapperton and Dennis also a current driver around the same racing circuit. “Dennis Clapperton…” says Jeff, “who runs the website RaceStatCentral, had his contact information listed so I emailed him and asked if he wanted any help compiling race results. I had a complete set of Area Auto Racing News papers back to 2002 and offered to provide them. Dennis had started the website and associated database as as college project.” Dennis took Jeff on as an assistant and the two began to collaborate on building on Dennis’ large website. “We divided up the papers and got complete results added to the website back to 2002. About that time he started focusing on building out the website and database further and also adding current results into the database. I started adding historical results year by year and now we have complete results back to 1990 and am working on 1989.”

 Dennis and Jeff eventually were asked to join the historian staff of ARRA and the paring was a match worthy of complete cohesiveness. “I've always been thankful and honored to be a part of ARRA but felt like I didn't really offer the typical stats that other historians worked on and provided. I also share an inventory of racing papers with Dennis so I don't really have the resources to do that sort of thing. Instead, I try to make sure that both websites are telling the same story. I think its important that both websites are in communication and working to present accurate and informative data. Someone should be able to research a modified driver or a track and see the same results regardless of using ARRA or Race Stat Central.”

 So…Zimmerman serves as a behind the scenes fact checker, cross checking racing statistics between ARRA and RaceStatCentral to make sure everything is aligned with each other and there are no discrepancies between the two titan databases. “It seems like an easy endeavor….” Reveals Jeff, “… to just compile results from a press release but its much more difficult than it seems for a number of reasons and the more we can collaborate on stats, it just makes for a more defendable and respectable product. So I've found this kind of modified racing stat editor niche for ARRA and since I have access to the Race Stat Central database, I'm well positioned to do it. I've always wanted to be part of local racing and am thrilled to be included in this great group of people working to preserve the history of the sport. 

 Jeff Zimmerman is just one of a bevy of dedicated auto racing historians that selflessly dedicate untold numbers of hours in the task of gathering statistics and assuring that they are properly and accurately documented to provide to the racing public and media for dependable use. 

 “I remember the first time I actually met both Jeff and Dennis Clapperton.” says Fred Voorhees, President of ARRA. “We had just brought the two of them on board at ARRA as Associate Historians and I had already begun to collect extra racing papers and Dennis was in need of as many as I could supply. “We met up at the Fulton Speedway, probably for the annual Victoria 200 event, so that I could hand over the stash that I had for him. Since then, both Dennis and Jeff have been constant help in providing the occasional stats that were not to be found and the information flowed both ways between us.” Voorhees mentioned of the two. “They are valued members of our historian staff!” Watch for the occasional feature of our dedicated historians of ARRA in the future!

Auto Racing Research Associates is a growing group of forty five auto racing historians across the country banded together for the purpose of the research, documentation and displaying of auto racing history such as driver win statistics, track, racing series and organizations histories and also the background of racing personalities, particular cars from the past and various other interesting facts of racing history that should not be forgotten. ARRA continues to build a network of associated auto racing related websites to unite for better chances of furthering the understanding of the past of our sport. ARRA offers looking up services for those looking for one particular piece of information from the past. They are the official statistics information source of the Flemington Speedway Historical Society and have been doing much of the research work for a number of years for the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame in Weedsport, NY. ARRA President, Fred Voorhees, was honored by the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame, located in the Weedsport, NY based Dirt Modified Museum for his work for ARRA in July of 2025, being awarded the Andrew S. Fusco Award for Media Excellence.