SPARTA, Ky – NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) rookie Dalton Sargeant earned a much-needed top-10 finish in Thursday night’s Buckle Up Your Truck 225 at Kentucky Speedway.
In his first season of Truck competition for GMS Racing, the Boca Raton, Fla. native hasn’t had much to boast about, however, leaping into the second half of the season, Sargeant’s No. 25 Performance Plus Motor Oil Chevrolet is finding itself higher on the scoring pylon from practice to qualifying and the race.
The upward trend continued Thursday for the four-time ARCA Racing Series winner earning his third top-10 result of the season.
“It was really great to get a solid top-10 finish for my guys at GMS Racing,” said Sargeant. “We’ve had to fight a lot of adversity over the past couple of weeks, so it’s really nice to be able to have a solid finish.
“Hopefully, we can build some momentum off of this and continue to bring fast Performance Plus Motor Oil Chevrolets to the race track each and every week.”
After starting ninth, Sargeant finished 10th during at the end of Stage 1 battling a loose race truck. Throughout Stage 2 – the handling improved somewhat for the NASCAR Next alumnus but finished 11th at the end of the stage.
With another swing at adjustments for Stage 3, his truck fired off well for the final stage allowing the 20-year-old to maintain his presence inside the top-10.
Turning lap times comparable to the top-four trucks, the team was hopeful that four tires during the team’s final pit stop under green flag conditions would prove to beneficial.
Unfortunately, the strategy didn’t work and Sargeant ran out of laps to better his ninth-place result.
“We took a gamble and went for four tires during the green flag stop and it didn’t pay off,” added Sargeant. “It had the potential to help us get even further up had there been a caution – but it was so difficult to pass.”
With his first top-10 finish since Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, Sargeant and his Doug Randolph led team head to Eldora Speedway for the prestigious Eldora Dirt Derby on Jul. 18.
It will be Sargeant’s first Truck tango with Eldora.
“I’m excited to go to Eldora and race on the dirt for my first time in a truck and hopefully be able to come home with another solid finish,” Sargeant said.
The former European open-wheel competitor isn’t completely dense to dirt racing. In 2017, he competed on the two dirt tracks of Springfield and DuQuoin in ARCA earning a 10th and eighth place finish respectively.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
