The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will return to Music City, U.S.A. for the Rackley Roofing 200 at Nashville Superspeedway this Friday, June 24 at 8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Nashville Superspeedway is a 1.33-mile, D-shaped, all concrete oval located just outside Nashville, Tennessee. The first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Nashville Superspeedway was on August 10, 2001, and the race was won by Scott Riggs driving a Dodge for team owner Jim Smith. Riggs dominated the event leading 131 of the 150 laps (87.3%).
In total, Nashville Superspeedway has hosted the Camping World Truck Series 14 times producing 11 different pole winners and 12 different race winners from 2001 to 2011 and 2021. ThorSport Racing’s Matt Crafton is the only series driver to make starts in all 14 previous Camping World Truck Series races at Nashville.
On-track activity for the Truck series will begin on Friday, June 24 with practice at 4 p.m. ET followed by qualifying at 4:30 p.m. ET on FS1. Nashville has produced 11 different Truck Series pole winners all-time, led by Mike Skinner (2005, 2007), Kyle Busch (2010, 2011), and Todd Bodine (2008, 2010) with two poles each.
Johnny Benson (2006, 2008) and Kyle Busch (2010, 2011) lead the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in wins at Nashville Superspeedway with two victories each. Last season’s Nashville race was won by Team DGR’s Ryan Preece, leading just eight laps of the total event.
Regular Season Champion Watch: Three races to go
The battle for the 2022 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Regular Season Championship is heating up with just three races left until the Playoffs kickoff. The top four drivers in the series driver standings following Knoxville Raceway are separated by only 14 points, with Kyle Busch Motorsport’s John Hunter Nemechek in the standings lead.
Kyle Busch Motorsports’ John Hunter Nemechek won last season’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Regular Season Championship and looks to become the first driver since the inception of the regular season title in the series in 2017 to win multiple championships. Former Camping World Truck Series Regular Season Champions include Christopher Bell (2017), Johnny Sauter (2018), Grant Enfinger (2019), Austin Hill (2020) and John H. Nemechek (2021).
Nemechek currently holds the points standings lead by five points over Front Motorsports’ driver Zane Smith in second, followed by ThorSport Racing’s and 2021 series champion Ben Rhodes (-10) in third and Nemechek’s KBM teammate Chandler Smith (-14) in fourth.
All four of the regular season title contenders this season made their series track debuts at Nashville Superspeedway last season. Zane Smith had the best finish of the four in fourth, followed by Rhodes (seventh), Nemechek (10th) and Chandler Smith (13th).
Playoff Bubble: Five spots left to fill in the next three races
With three races left in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series regular season, time is winding down to make the Playoffs. As it stands, the last two drivers seated ninth and 10th in the series driver standings are Grant Enfinger and Matt Crafton. In Enfinger’s first season back with a new-look GMS Racing, he has racked up a solid three top-fives and seven top-10s for the year. Crafton, a long-tenured veteran on ThorSport Racing’s roster, sits just above the cutoff line with one top-five and seven top-10s. Heading into Nashville, Crafton will look to utilize his extensive experience of 14 starts at the track to distance himself from the cutoff line while Enfinger hopes to remain consistent.
Sitting below the cutline include a mix of eager drivers hoping to race for the championship. Derek Kraus of McAnally Hilgemann Racing leads this group sitting 27 points back from the cutoff line. The driver of the No. 19 Chevrolet had a solid weekend at Knoxville, starting the race from the pole position and finishing sixth. Kraus and his team aim to carry this speed into Nashville Superspeedway, a track where he also won the pole in 2021 and brought home a fifth-place finish.
Matt DiBenedetto sits just behind Kraus in the Playoff outlook standings at twelfth. In his first year driving the No. 25 Chevrolet for Rackley W.A.R., DiBenedetto has yet to finish a race in the top-five but has garnered six top 10s on the year. Coming into Nashville, he has two previous starts in two different series. He finished 10th driving part-time for Joe Gibbs Racing’s NASCAR Xfinity Series team in 2010 along with a 24th-place finish last year in the NASCAR Cup Series for Wood Brothers Racing. Being 43 points back from the cutline, DiBenedetto will need to lock in competitively for the next three races if he wants to point his way into the Playoffs.
In a similar situation, Tanner Gray hopes to gain ground on those ahead of him with a dwindling number of races to do so. The 21-year-old from Artesia, New Mexico sits 50 points back from potentially making the Playoffs in his third year of full-time Camping World Truck Series racing. The No. 15 Team DGR Ford has shown glimpses of speed with Gray behind the wheel. His most recent finish at Nashville, 18th, came after having to start from the rear of the field. He will look to make the same kind of headway toward the front this weekend as he hopes to add another Ford into the Playoff bracket.
Tyler Ankrum, 14th in the series Playoff outlook, still has a shot to point his way into the Playoffs. Coming off two straight top-10 finishes at Sonoma and Knoxville; the driver of the No. 16 Hattori Racing Enterprises Toyota has had a streak of solid runs. Ankrum will need to improve on a 23rd-place finish last year at Nashville if he hopes to keep his Playoff hopes alive.
