After two weeks of sitting idle, Max McLaughlin returns to action on Thursday night at Bristol Motor Speedway. The driver of the No. 1 Mohawk Northeast Toyota Camry enters “The Last Great Colosseum” for the third time in his pavement career, the most of any other venue on the ARCA Racing Series tour. In two prior appearances at BMS, McLaughlin posted his best finish of seventh last August in the ARCA Menards Series East.
Making Some Noise … “Mad Max” has found another level of performance of the No. 1 Mohawk Northeast Camry as of late, and hopes to make some more noise as he returns to “Thunder Valley”. McLaughlin has posted consecutive fourth-place finishes in his last two outings at Dover International Speedway and World Wide Technology Raceway. In his last five starts, McLaughlin has collected two top-five’s and five top-10 finishes. He looks to continue his season’s upward trajectory with another robust showing at BMS and is aiming for his first career top-five result at “The World’s Fastest Half Mile”.
Deuces Are Wild … Crew chief Dave McCarty and the Mohawk Northeast team have prepared chassis No. 002 for McLaughlin to drive for the third straight race. Since returning this Toyota Camry to the track at Iowa in July, McLaughlin has revitalized his season with pair of top-five results and has not finishes worse than seventh. Thursday’s 200-lap event will also mark the first time that McLaughlin has driven chassis No. 002 at BMS.
Tune In … FOX Sports 1 will have live coverage of the Bush’s Beans 200 at 9:30 p.m. ET immediately following the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series event. Stay connected with McLaughlin and the No. 1 Mohawk Northeast team by following @Hattori_Racing on Twitter, @hattoriracing on Instagram, and Hattori Racing Enterprises on Facebook.
Max McLaughlin Quote:On the team’s upward trend entering Gateway“Even though we struggled last year at Bristol, I love racing there. It’s one of the most intense places that we race and is a true drivers’ track. You have a lot of input on the performance of the car and I feel like this is one of the places where my dirt experience helps. We’ve been able to have some good runs lately with our Mohawk Northeast Camry and hopefully we’ll keep that going on Thursday night. Dave (McCarty) and the HRE guys have been working really hard and coming up with ideas on how to get us running better and it’s been showing. We keep finding speed each week when we show up and we’re certainly capable of having a strong top-five run at Bristol.”
HRE PR
