Last September, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series returned to Darlington Raceway for the first time since 2011.
Ben Rhodes won last year‘s event and — naturally enough, given the hiatus — revisits Darlington as the only former winner in the field this week. Rhodes also won the first two races of the 2021 season and will try to add a third victory in Friday night‘s LiftKits4Less.com 200 (7:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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After Rhodes‘ two wins, Kyle Busch Motorsports swept the next five events on the schedule, keeping Ford and Chevrolet out of Victory Lane. Like Rhodes, KBM driver John Hunter Nemechek will try for his third triumph of the season in the first of three Triple Truck Challenge races, with a $50,000 bonus available to the winner.
For Rhodes, ThorSport Racing‘s switch from Ford to Toyota between seasons has been an important aspect of his success.
“I think the big difference for us just has been Toyota‘s engineering platform,” Rhodes said. “They‘ve got so much engineering support and so much knowledge and data and information available to us that it really makes it night and day, not only strategy during the race, but when you are going to a place and you don‘t have practice, what do you pull from?
“I think that‘s the biggest difference is the fact they‘ve got this wealth of knowledge and they‘ve got this army of people, and together we‘re working towards the future, not just looking over our shoulder the whole time at what we did in the past.”