BRISTOL, Tenn.—Rajah Caruth has upped his game every time he has raced at Bristol Motor Speedway—and Friday’s performance in the UNOH 200 was no exception.
Caruth qualified third and finished in the same position in the No. 71 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet–a career-best—and won his first stage of the season.
The timing could not have been better for the 22-year-old racer, who finished 18th at the Milwaukee Mile—the first race in the Round of 10 of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs. He entered the second race 10th in the Playoff standings, four points below the cut line.
“I was disappointed to not get the win,” Caruth said. “But I’m just really proud of our team from executing on pit road, to the spotter’s stand and on the pit box. My group did a great job. We were in the mix with the 19 (points leader Christian Eckes) and 11 (Corey Heim)—and they are the perennial contenders each week.
“To be in the mix with those guys is really something to be proud of. Just thankful to HendrickCars.com, Mr. H (Rick Hendrick) and Miss Linda (Hendrick), everybody at the auto group and Ally Financial. The men and women at Spire and Team Chevy. Man, I wanted that one bad, but proud to go into Kansas (Speedway) in the position that we’re in now.”
Four laps before the end of the first stage, Caruth passed Heim for the lead and the stage win. He regained the lead 10 laps before the end of the second stage, but Heim passed the No. 71 truck eight laps before the caution was called for an incident between Nick Sanchez and pole winner Connor Zilisch.
Still, between his stage points and the third-place result, he vaulted from 10th to fifth in the standings entering the third and final race of this round—next Friday at Kansas Speedway.
“I had a shot at it,” Caruth said. “I just didn’t get far enough in there on Corey to do anything. And I wasn’t going to wipe either one of us out.”
Crew chief Chad Walter has watched Caruth mature over the last two seasons, first as a rookie in the truck and now as a Playoff contender. He believes his driver’s familiarity from track to track has helped him improve his race craft.
“Any time you have that rookie stripe on you get the chance to peel it off,” Walter said. “That’s not any more maturity than anyone else has but at the end of the day, I think he’s grown as a race car driver. He doesn’t put himself in bad spots. He doesn’t put other drivers in bad spots. He races hard and he races clean.
“Not everybody does that and they’ve been doing it a lot longer than him.”
After nearly a month between truck races, Caruth needed a moment to acclimate to the speed of the Bristol bullring.
“It was hard to get back into the rhythm,” Caruth said. “From my first laps of practice, I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t see,’ just because your neck muscles aren’t accustomed to the loads at a track like this. Now, I know what I need to do with my training throughout the week in a month like that.
“Otherwise, I felt good. I didn’t wear my cool suit. It’s a little warmer than it has been here at Bristol—just like Martinsville last fall. Really nothing different. I haven’t gotten to race the Xfinity car this year so it’s been tough with the off time. But we’ve made the most of it. I have a great group of people around me at the Chevrolet program to keep me going and doing the things I need to do.”
Caruth feels where he raced on Friday is “our potential.”
“We just haven’t capitalized and executed on it,” Caruth said. “It wasn’t a surprise. We were almost to our potential. It wasn’t a win, but third is still pretty strong.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
