Saturday’s 200-miler at Homestead-Miami Speedway (HMS) marks Chase Purdy’s debut at South Florida’s 1.5-mile oval. The driver of the No. 61 Toyota Tsusho Toyota Tundra TRD Pro rolls into HMS fresh off his season-best performance at Talladega Superspeedway where he led six laps en-route to a seventh-place finish. The Meridian, Miss. driver has collected four finishes of 15th or better on 1.5-mile tracks this season and looks to add another on Saturday afternoon to pad his career-high mark of 12 top-15 results in 2022.
Homestead History … While Purdy makes his first appearance at HMS, HRE has a steep history of success in South Florida. In 2018, HRE’s No. 16 team took home the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series title with a walk-off race win and doubled down the following season with back-to-back victories at HMS. In the organization’s four prior appearances at HMS as a single-truck outfit, HRE has collected two wins, three top-five’s, and four results inside the top seven. Purdy hopes to add to that rich stat line in his HMS debut.
Season to Date … Purdy resides 16th in the drivers’ championship point standings with two races remaining. He is on track to post a career-best average finish, currently at 17.8, and has collected two top-10’s and a career high 12 top-15 results.
Chassis Selection … Crew chief Matt Lucas and the No. 61 team have prepared chassis No. 018 for the final intermediate venue of the season. Purdy most recently raced this Toyota Tundra TRD Pro inside the top-10 at Kansas Speedway in September before suffering a pit road violation. He also drove chassis No. 018 to an 11th-place finish at Pocono Raceway in July.
Tune In … FOX Sports1’s coverage from HMS begins on Saturday with NASCAR Raceday at 12:00 p.m. ET followed by the green flag at 1:00 p.m. ET. Stay connected with the No. 61 Toyota Tsusho team by following @Hattori_Racing on Twitter, @hattoriracing on Instagram, and Hattori Racing Enterprises on Facebook.
Chase Purdy Quote:
On making his first start at Homestead:
“It’ll be interesting to go to Homestead since I’ve never been there before. It looks like it has some similarities to a lot of other intermediates, but there are also a lot of things that make it race differently. The surface is really abrasive and creates a lot of tire wear and falloff, so that’s something we’ll need to manage throughout a run. It has a lot of different options to run all over the racetrack with variable banking, similar to Kansas and we were really fast there both in both races this year. This is the same truck we had at Kansas, so hopefully we can replicate that speed with our Toyota Tsusho Toyota Tundra TRD Pro this weekend.”
HRE PR
