NEMECHEK SCORES SEASON-LEADING THIRD VICTORY
John Hunter Nemechek claims final race in the Triple Truck Challenge
CHARLOTTE (May 28, 2021) – John Hunter Nemechek drove to his series-leading third victory of the season at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Friday evening. It was Kyle Busch Motorsports’ sixth win of the season and Toyota’s eighth victory in the first 10 Truck Series events this season.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
Charlotte Motor Speedway
Race 10 of 23 – 134 Laps, 201 Miles
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK
2nd, Carson Hocevar*
3rd, BEN RHODES
4th, STEWART FRIESEN
5th, Sheldon Creed*
6th, CHANDLER SMITH
7th, TY MAJESKI
8th, DEREK KRAUS
9th, AUSTIN HILL
11th, CHRISTIAN ECKES
20th, DREW DOLLAR
24th, DANNY BOHN
27th, CJ MCLAUGHLIN
30th, MATT CRAFTON
31st, JOHNNY SAUTER
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK, No. 4 Mobil 1 Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports
Finishing Position: 1st
Started with damage on your track in practice, and you came back and won tonight.
“You (Regan Smith) came and saw me earlier, and I told you we had a fast truck. I think we only ran 10 laps in practice, so hats off to all my guys. Eric Phillips (crew chief), all of my guys that work on this thing, everyone at KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports), the chassis shop, the fab shop, just everyone and all of their effort. Mobil 1, TRD, Toyota, Kyle (Busch, team owner) for this opportunity. Just so thankful, so blessed to be in this spot. How about this crowd? It’s awesome to have all of you back.”
With the Triple Truck Challenge, you get an extra 50k in your pocket.
“I honestly forgot about that. Thank you to Womply, Camping World, Marcus Lemonis, everyone that makes this series happen. It’s one of the greatest series – the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Awesome. Aspen (daughter) is asleep at home, but Taylor (wife) is here, so hopefully we can have some fun tonight and celebrate.”
What does it mean to overcome the practice incident and make it to victory lane?
“I completed two laps and wrecked on lap three. Huge shoutout to all my guys – Eric Phillips (crew chief) and all our guys here and back at the shop. The pit crew pretty much won the race tonight I feel like on pit road. We were able to jump some guys there after the first stage. It was so hard to pass. It was amazing. Eric did a great job making adjustments all night and I was telling him what we needed. This was our baby truck, this one has won three races for me this year and sadly it’s going to have to get fixed with that crazy crash. Just huge shoutout to everyone that made this possible – Kyle (Busch, team owner), thank you for the opportunity. Jack (Irving, TRD), Tyler (Gibbs, TRD), David Wilson (president, TRD) and everyone at Toyota and TRD for all their help, Mobil 1 as well. My wife’s here so we’re going to celebrate. Sadly, baby is back home sleeping, but she will have a trophy in the morning.”
Did you notice any difference in the handling after sustaining the damage from the accident?
“That might be a speed secret, I don’t know.”
How important is it to recover with this win after the 12th place run last weekend?
“We’re #Here4Wins and we’ve been using that hashtag since I announced I was coming to KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) last year and it’s a dominant team, dominant truck every single week. We’re going to have weeks where we’re off and we’ll struggle, but we’ll keep getting through it. I didn’t lose confidence in Eric (Phillips, crew chief) and he didn’t lose confidence in me. It’s just one bad race. You have to move on from it and look, we’re in victory lane here.”
STEWART FRIESEN, No. 52 Halmar International Toyota Tundra, Halmar Friesen Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
What made a difference tonight?
“Jon (Leonard, crew chief) made a good call to short pit that one stage and just got some good track position. We had a good Tundra. Thanks to Halmar. Thanks to all of our veterans and all of our military that gave the ultimate sacrifice so we can come out here and race trucks and modifieds on Memorial Weekend all over the country. I’m proud of my Canadian Roots, but I’m proud to call USA my home. Thanks to all of these guys. We needed a good night to get some momentum. We just were free all night. Nothing we did tightened us up where we could run with them, but proud of my guys.”
BEN RHODES, No. 99 Bombardier Toyota Tundra, ThorSport Racing
Finishing Position: 5th
How would you evaluate your race tonight?
“Feels like a win for us to be honest. Practice was really, really rough. I think we were 19th on the speed sheets and we threw everything we had at it after practice. This was a brand new truck coming into the race with no qualifying. Couldn’t be more proud of our Bombardier Tundra ThorSport team. They have done a fantastic job and our pit stops were on fire all night. Really, really proud of their effort and as my crew chief said, this is what we have to do to make ourselves contenders for this championship. Just super proud. I want to throw an apology out there to the 26 (Tyler Ankrum) too. I have to go see him. Everybody was checking up for the second stage right at the start-finish line and I had nowhere to go. I think he knew that too and he was trying to not hit somebody and I couldn’t slow down quick enough. Overall, good race for us.”
CHANDLER SMITH, No. 18 Safelite Auto Glass Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports
Finishing Position: 6th
How was your race?
“Our mindset going into tonight was that we were just going to be patient and work our way through the field. We knew that we were going to have a good Safelite Auto Glass Toyota Tundra. We just needed to pick and choose our battles and we would get there eventually. The 13 (Johnny Sauter) and I got into it on a restart. Ended up taking a good bit of our sideforce away on the right rear quarterpanel, so we had to fix that because it was almost undrivable. Then when we fixed that, we made the call to get a little track position. Then once we got a little track position, we started picking our way through the field and captured a P-6 finish.”
TY MAJESKI, No. 66 Simcraft Toyota Tundra, ThorSport Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
How was your race tonight?
“I didn’t know what to expect. This is a fifth effort for ThorSport. Bud and all of the guys did a good job preparing this thing. When I came to engineer this truck for Paul (Menard) at CotA, this thing was basically bare bones so they worked a lot of hours to get this thing ready and they did a good job on it. Just really proud of the effort. We had that penalty after the second stage, and it definitely set us back a bit but we fought back to a top-10 finish. Thought we had top-five speed, just didn’t have track position to go with it, but overall, really good effort for everyone.”
DEREK KRAUS, No. 19 NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota Tundra, McAnally Hilgemann Racing
Finishing Position: 8th
How was the race for you?
“It was a really good night with my NAPA Power Premium Plus Toyota Tundra. We executed everything right. Mark and all of the guys brought a really good truck to the track so that always helps. We were able to get a lot of stage points and then we were able to run in the top-10 most of the race. It’s really tough to pass. Once that yellow came out, we were like 12th. We stalled out, but that final restart helped us out a lot and we were able to get a few more positions, so overall it was a really good night.”
About Toyota
Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in the U.S. and North America for more than 60 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands. During that time, Toyota has created a tremendous value chain as our teams have contributed to world-class design, engineering, and assembly of more than 40 million cars and trucks in North America, where we have 14 manufacturing plants, 15 including our joint venture in Alabama (10 in the U.S.), and directly employ more than 47,000 people (over 36,000 in the U.S.). Our 1,800 North American dealerships (nearly 1,500 in the U.S.) sold nearly 2.8 million cars and trucks (nearly 2.4 million in the U.S.) in 2019.
Through the Start Your Impossible campaign, Toyota highlights the way it partners with community, civic, academic and governmental organizations to address our society’s most pressing mobility challenges. We believe that when people are free to move, anything is possible. For more information about Toyota, visit www.toyotanewsroom.com.
