Daniel Hemric muscled his way to a strong sixth-place result in the 2026 Ecosave 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Friday, October 9.
The 2021 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion from Kannapolis, North Carolina, rolled off the starting grid from his 16th-place qualifying spot while sporting a throwback paint scheme to his No. 19 Delphi/McAnally-Hilgemann Racing Chevrolet Silverado RST entry that pays tribute to the late two-time Cup Series champion, Kyle Busch, and the scheme Busch piloted when he drove for Hendrick Motorsports during the 2007 O’Reilly season.
Hemric spent the entirety of the first stage period racing within the top-15 mark. After carving his way up as high as 11th place in the early laps, Hemric settled in 13th place at the first stage’s conclusion. Restarting in 17th place for the start of the second stage period that commenced on Lap 37, Hemric managed to navigate his way back up to 11th place by the Lap 40 mark before he cracked the top-10 mark for the first time during the following lap, where he was ranked in 10th place. Ultimately, Hemric retained the spot and netted a single stage point when the second stage period concluded on Lap 60.
After starting the final stage period with 66 laps remaining in 14th place, Hemric steadily carved his way back into the top-10 mark and he raced his way up to seventh place within the final 40-lap mark. Amid a late cycle of green flag pit stops that featured a handful of front-runners pitting, Hemric remained on the track and was ranked in fifth place when a caution for an on-track incident occurred with 36 laps remaining. This allowed the Kannapolis native to pit with the leaders and restart in eighth place for the next restart with 29 laps remaining.
Through two additional cautions and restarts, Hemric carved his way within the top-six mark and was up into fourth place following an 11-lap dash to the finish. After appearing to have fourth place solidified, he was overtaken by Bayley Currey and Chandler Smith in the final laps before he took the checkerd flag in sixth place. The result enabled Hemric to notch his ninth top-10 result of the 2026 Craftsman Truck Series season, his second in a row in the Chase and his highest-finishing result at Charlotte in the series. It also places his current average-finishing result within the first three Chase events of this season at 7.3.
“[I’m] Disappointed we couldn’t finish a little better than we did, but the reality is, we finished better than we ran all day,” Hemric said. [I] Just got fortunate there with the yellow that caught a couple of the guys that we were around and racing closely to. That was a break. It netted us two or three spots. I had a couple of restarts go our way. I thought we were gonna claw out a fourth-place finish there and the front tires shut off with like five [laps] to go.
Prior to Charlotte, Hemric was ranked in sixth place in the Chase standings and trailed the points lead by 87 points. After Charlotte, he jumped a single spot to fifth place in the standings despite his deficit to the points lead growing to 109. With the consistent runs and results generated on the track, Hemric strives to cap off the 2026 campaign on a strong note.
“I’m not a momentum guy, but I am a guy who believes that when your product gets better, you run better and that makes momentum,” Hemric said. “I feel like our trucks and our processes are beginning to be where they need to be. We’re showing that with our results week in and week out. This is not by accident. I look forward to continuing on the next four weeks.”
Daniel Hemric’s 2026 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season continues next Friday, October 16, at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona. The event’s broadcast time is scheduled to commence at 7:30 p.m. ET on FS1, NASCAR Racing Network and SiriusXM.
