From doing a full barrel roll while airborne at Daytona International Speedway to qualifying for his first career appearance in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs, Taylor Gray aims to shift his mentality and set aside the adversity and steady climb he endured to make the postseason to emerge as a potential finalist for the 2024 championship.
After missing the first three races of the 2023 season due to age restrictions and missing the Playoffs, Gray, a native of Artesia, New Mexico, had the No. 17 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro entry all to himself for the entire 23-race schedule with veteran crew chief Jeff Hensley joining the organization and working atop Gray’s pit box.
Gray commenced the 2024 season on a wild note when he was involved in a multi-truck wreck on the final lap at Daytona International Speedway. During the incident, Gray, who was clipped by Jack Wood after Wood got turned by Rajah Caruth to ignite the wreck, had his truck go airborne and perform a full turnover on top of three competitors’ trucks after he got T-boned into the side of Daniel Dye before he rolled back over right-side up and emerged uninjured.
Following the season-opening incident that left Gray bitter with the outcome, he then went on a six-race hot streak by finishing no worse that seventh on the track and tying his career-best result with a runner-up result at Circuit of the Americas. He would then encounter some on-track challenges in the form of four finishes of 16th or worse over his next eight starts that resulted with his No. 17 team slipping out of the top five in the regular-season standings. Nonetheless, the driver and team recorded four top-15 results during the stretch and capped off the regular-season stretch by finishing in third place in the regular-season finale at Richmond Raceway.
Thus far, Gray has the seventh-best average-finishing result for full-time competitors of the 2024 season at 12.3. While he remains winless through 16 events, the top fives (five), top 10s (nine) and laps led (25) are the most he has garnered compared to the previous season.
With the 2024 regular-season stretch complete, Taylor Gray is set to commence the Playoffs in eighth place in the Playoff standings with 2,003 points. He will battle alongside teammate Corey Heim and eight additional competitors in his pursuit for his first championship within NASCAR’s top three major series.
Looking ahead to his first campaign as a Playoff competitor, Gray leans towards both a cautious and optimistic mindset as key approaches that would enable him to remain eligible for the series’ championship at this season’s conclusion.
“[Making the Playoffs] means a lot, especially with these [No. 17] guys,” Gray said after Richmond on FS1. “They worked their butts off every week and every day. It’s really for them and now, it’s time for me and [crew chief] Jeff [Hensley] to sit down and go race for a championship. I think honestly, [the goal is] just keeping the mindset cool and brushing things off the shoulder and not getting too antsy about certain things and being able to rebound from bad races quickly.”
Taylor Gray’s 2024 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs is set to commence at the Milwaukee Mile for the LiUNA! 175. The event’s broadcast time is scheduled to occur this Sunday, August 25, at 4 p.m. ET on FS1.
