Aric Almirola wins 2025 GovX200 for his family and Young Life

On Saturday, semi-retired NASCAR driver Aric Almirola captures the victory in this year’s GovX200 race over Tucson native Alex Bowman in a dramatic last-lap pass.

Almirola won with a margin of victory of 0.045 seconds, the second-closest in the track’s history.

“I just knew I needed to get from there to here first,” Almirola said Saturday, according to NASCAR. “I knew I was going to use him up a little bit, but was trying to win the race. I feel like it was warranted. I didn’t feel like I did anything overly egregious. I just throttled up, and it was a drag race to the start-finish line.”

Almirola, a three-time winner in the NASCAR national series, dedicated the race to his friend JD Gibbs, who passed away in 2019. He and the Joe Gibbs Racing team partnered with Young Life, a Christ-centered ministry, as a primary sponsor.

As the racing season begins, Almirola has a part-time schedule to spend quality time with his family, and he takes pride in having them witness his rising success.

“I’ve been fortunate to do it several times, and it never gets old. It’s so much fun,” Almirola said. “And [my kids]  watched me race since they were peanuts. Like they’ve been coming to the race track since they were ten months old, right? And they didn’t get to see me have a lot of success when they were younger, and not that they would probably remember it anyway.

“Now they’re at such an awesome age, and they’re going to remember all this stuff. The fact that they get to share this with me and that we continue to get to do this as a family is really special.”