NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Overview:
Event: Kansas Lottery 200, Race 19 of 23, 134 laps – 30/30/74; 201 Miles
Location: Kansas Speedway (1.5-mile tri-oval)
Date/Broadcast: Sept. 8, 2023, at 9 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR 90
Get to Know Jack:
Jack Wood will make his ninth NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start of 2023 for Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) behind the wheel of the No. 51 High Fives Foundation Chevrolet in Friday’s Kansas Lottery 200 at Kansas Speedway. Wood has finished inside the top 10 in two of his eight Truck Series starts this season, including a career-best ninth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in April. Across 43 career Truck Series starts, he has produced three laps led and three top-10 finishes.
Wood did not race in the Truck Series race at Kansas earlier this year, KBM owner-driver Kyle Busch qualified second, led 11 laps and finished seventh in the No. 51 that night. Wood did, however, race in the ARCA Menards Series event that day, where he came from the ninth starting position to finish fifth. In his two prior Truck Series starts at Kansas, Wood has an average finish of 26.0. He also has one additional ARCA Menards Series start at the 1.5-mile tri-oval, a fourth-place finish in 2021.
The High Fives Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to be the leader of education and recovery of life-altering injuries in outdoor action sports, will serve as the primary sponsor on Wood’s No. 51 Silverado Friday night. High Fives focuses on preventing life-changing injuries and provides resources and hope if they happen. They have helped countless injured athletes and Veterans get back to doing what they love by creating a universal shift in adventure sports that expands what is possible for those who have faced life-changing injuries.
After two races of the 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series owner’s playoffs the No. 51 team sits 10th on the playoff grid. With just Friday night’s races remaining in the Round of 10, they sit 31 points below the cutoff line for advancing to the Round of 8. The No. 51 team qualified for the owner’s playoffs after finishing seventh in the regular season owner point standings. Across 18 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 12.9. 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.
In addition to his part-time schedule for KBM in the Truck Series this season, Wood is running a limited schedule in the ARCA Series with Rev Racing. The California native has two top five and five top-10 finishes with an average result of 10.6 across seven ARCA Menards Series starts this season. Across 16 career ARCA Menards Series starts he has recorded three top-five and nine top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 12.4.
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. Busch’s seventh-place result earlier this year was Pattie’s first race atop the pit box for a Truck Series race at Kansas. His best result across 26 cup starts was fourth with Juan Pablo Montoya in 2009.
As part of the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation’s Honor A Cancer Hero Program, Wood’s truck will carry the name of Kaitlyn Helms above the driver side door Friday night. The 14-year-old Florida native is currently in remission from thyroid cancer.
Jack Wood, Driver Q&A:
You’ve shown speed on the mile-and-a-halves this year. Are you excited to go to Kansas?
“Yeah, I think it’s kind of the last normal mile-and-a-half track on the schedule this season for us, so obviously the KBM mile-and-a-half stuff has historically been really fast as an organization. At the first Kansas race I think they were a little bit off, so everyone on the No. 51 team and really KBM as a whole has put in a lot of work to get the stuff right going back to Kansas. I feel like out of all the races this year, I’ve put in the most time preparing for this one and trying to get in contact with as many guys as I could to be prepared to go out and have a good showing.”
What did you learn observing the first Kansas race from behind the scenes at the track while Kyle was driving?
“I sat on the pit box for the whole race to see firsthand how Brian (Pattie, crew chief) and Darren (Fraley, engineer) call the race. From that side of it, it was good for me to get that perspective on what they are doing throughout a race. I think one of the biggest things I’ve had to kind of work on this year is just giving better feedback and trying to be quick with what I can give them since practice is so short and I’m trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can. I got to sit and watch Kyle kind of do his thing and watched the different lines that he was using. Really the biggest thing for me is that I can go back and watch the 51 truck from the spring race and look at SMT data with Kyle driving it. I think I’ve been able to learn a lot of what he’s doing, his controls in the truck and I think a lot of that stuff, as far as my preparation, is going to help quite a bit.”
Talk about your sponsor this week,
“It’s really cool for me to have High Fives on the truck. It connects what I did before I was racing in NASCAR to what I’m doing now, because I grew up ski racing for a long time in California. To have a non-profit that does such a cool thing with injured athletes that have had life-altering injuries and getting them back out to the sport they love is something that really means a lot to me. I saw a lot of those injuries when I was a kid. To have them on the truck and help raise awareness but also to be around a group of people like that is going to be very inspiring. We’re excited to have Roy (Tuscany, Founder & CEO) at the track with us and all the incredible stuff he’s doing. I’m really looking forward to Friday and we’re going to give it all we have to put together a good race for those guys.”
Jack Wood Career Highlights:
- Has produced three top-10 finishes across 43 career starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Posted a series-best ninth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in April.
- Has compiled 14 laps led, three top-five and nine top-10 finishes across 16 career ARCA Menards Series events.
- Has totaled three top-five and eight top-10 finishes across 12 career starts in the ARCA Menards West Series.
- Compiled one top-five and three top-10 finishes across 24 starts in the SRL Spears Southwest Tour from 2017 to 2021.
- Jack Wood’s No. 51 High Fives Foundation Chevrolet Silverado RST:
KBM-77: The No. 51 High Fives Foundation team will unload KBM-77 for Friday’s race at Kansas. This Silverado was the truck that KBM owner-driver Kyle Busch drove to his organization’s historic 100th victory earlier this year at Pocono Raceway. William Byron piloted KBM-77 to a fourth-place finish earlier this year at Darlington Raceway in its debut.
KBM Notes of Interest:
- KBM drivers have collected six wins, six poles, 816 laps led, 17 top-five and 30 top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 10.0 across 45 starts at Kansas. John Hunter Nemechek scored the organization’s most recent triumph at Kansas capturing the pole and leading a race-high 88 laps en route to victory last September. Owner-driver Kyle Busch has collected three wins at Kansas (2014, 2017 and 2021). Noah Gragson led a race-high 128 laps and swept all three stages in the 2018 event and William Byron earned his first career Craftsman Trucks victory there in 2016.
- KBM holds the Craftsman Truck Series records for most career wins (100) and most wins in a single season (14 in 2014). 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.
