- Jack Wood will make his 13th NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start of 2023 for Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) behind the wheel of the No. 51 Rubbin’ is Racing Chevrolet in Friday night’s Lucas Oil 150 at Phoenix Raceway. The 23-year-old driver has two prior starts in the Truck Series at Phoenix, with a best result of 20th coming in the 2021 event.
- Friday night’s race will be the final race in a storied chapter for KBM. The organization holds the Craftsman Truck Series records for most career wins (100) and most wins in a single season (14 in 2014). Owner-driver Kyle Busch picked up his organization’s first-ever win at Nashville Superspeedway in April of 2010 and also picked up its 100th Truck Series victory at Pocono Raceway in July of 2023. In addition to collecting a series-record seven owner’s championships, the organization has produced two championship-winning drivers: Erik Jones (2015) and Christopher Bell (2017). With 42 victories, the No. 51 is the winningest number in KBM’s Truck Series fleet. The 51 has been victorious at Phoenix three times, 2013 and 2014 with Erik Jones and 2016 with Daniel Suarez.
- Wood has finished inside the top 10 in two of his 12 Truck Series starts this season, including a career-best ninth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in April. The California native has qualified inside the top 10 for seven of 12 Truck Series events this season, with a season-best qualifying effort of second coming at Texas. Across 47 career Truck Series starts, Wood has produced five laps led and three top-10 finishes.
- The No. 51 Chevrolet Silverado will carry primary sponsorship from Rubbin’ Is Racing, a NASCAR podcast presented by Barstool Sports. Hosts Large and Spider team up to go behind the scenes of one of the world’s more interesting sports. The duo will interview some of the most well-known racers on the track and dive into the sports betting element of NASCAR. Tune in to hear everything that happens on and off the asphalt. New Episodes release once a week, every Thursday and can be found at https://www.barstoolsports.com/shows/106/rubbin-is-racing or you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
- Wood will be pulling double duty this weekend at Phoenix, driving the No. 28 Chevrolet in the ARCA Menards West Series race. He has two top-five and six top-10 finishes with an average result of 10.4 across eight ARCA Menards Series starts this season. Across 17 career ARCA Menards Series starts he has recorded three top-five and 10 top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 12.2. He has two prior ARCA Starts at Phoenix, including earlier this year when he qualified second and was running inside the top-five when he got turned from behind by another competitor and was relegated to a 28th-place finish.
- The No. 51 team qualified for the Truck Series owner’s playoffs after finishing seventh in the regular season owner point standings but did not make it out of the Round of 10. Across 22 starts in 2023, the team has recorded two wins, one pole, 170 laps led, seven top-five and 10 top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 14.1. Owner-driver Kyle Busch recorded both of the 51 team’s victories winning the second race of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and most recently collecting his organization’s historic 100th win July 22 at Pocono Raceway.
- Veteran crew chief Brian Pattie is calling the shots for the No. 51 team this year in his first season at KBM after spending the last 14 seasons atop the pit box in the NASCAR Cup Series. It took the veteran signal caller just two races to get his first win at KBM, winning with owner-driver Kyle Busch at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The duo won again in July at Pocono Raceway and collected KBM’s 100th career Truck Series victory. In the Cup Series, his drivers produced six wins, nine poles, 57 top-five and 131 top-10 finishes across 528 starts. The Florida native has also recorded 11 wins in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and now has three wins as a crew chief in the Truck Series. This will be Pattie’s first time atop the pit box for a Truck Series race at Phoenix. In Cup Series action, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s fourth-place finish in the spring of 2017 was his best result across 28 starts. He was victorious with Jamie McMurray in the fall NASCAR Xfinity Series race in 2004.
Jack Wood;
You showed speed in the ARCA race earlier this year at Phoenix. Does that excite you for this race?
“When you go to a place that you’ve run well at, it gets you excited about going back. Of all the tracks on the Truck Series schedule, Phoenix is the track that I’ve been to the most. It was close to home growing up and I got the chance to race there in an ARCA West car a couple times with my family. Of all the races on the schedule, I’ve probably looked forward to this one the most. Obviously, with this being the last race under the KBM banner, it has motivated me more to go out and get the last win in the last race for the organization. I’m excited about going there, our sim stuff has gone well and we’ve had speed there in the past as an organization.”
Will doing double duty and getting extra track time driving the ARCA car benefit you this weekend?
“I think it will help. I will end up with around 100 minutes of practice. When I’ve ran the ARCA car before a truck race it has helped knock the rust off and helps me fire off better on the short run in the truck. I’m lucky to be able to get in the No. 28 ARCA car, I think we will have a good shot at it there and hopefully it will be a good confidence builder going into the truck race that night.”
You’ve got another cool sponsor this week with Barstool Sports on the truck. Talk about that.
“It will be fun. For me, as a younger kid, Barstool Sports has been a fun thing to follow with what those guys have done over the last 10 years. It’s exciting to have them on the truck, especially on the west coast at a track that they’ve been a part of the last couple of years. Their presence in NASCAR is growing so it will be fun to have Large and Spider (Hosts of Rubbin’ is Racing Podcast, Barstool Sports) out there for that. Hopefully, we can put on a good show for them and then go have some fun at the Barstool bar down in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
Kyle Busch Motorsports PR
