Kyle Busch was scheduled to compete this weekend at Nashville in the Spire Motorsports Chevrolet truck. Defending race winner, Rajah Caruth will instead steer the No. 7 Chevy in Friday night’s Allegiance 200 (8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in honor of his racing hero.
Caruth is one of five NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series regulars racing – a list that also includes Love, Sawalich, Brandon Jones and Parker Retzlaff.
They can anticipate strong competition from Nashville’s 2024 truck race winner, McAnally-Hilgemann Racing’s Christian Eckes, who pulled off one of the great feats in the sport – leading every single lap (150) en route to that victory. Those 150 laps out front are the most laps led by anyone since the series returned to the track in 2021.
Former series champ, ThorSport Racing’s Ben Rhodes has the best average finish (9.8) at Nashville among the full-timers since 2021 with Eckes second on that list (10.0).
Only eight races remain to set the 10-driver Playoff field and championship leader, Tricon Garage’s Kaden Honeycutt leads Layne Riggs by 38 points atop the standings with Front Row Motorsports’ Chandler Smith only a point behind Riggs. Positions nine (Stewart Friesen) and 12th (Daniel Hemric) are separated by a slight 14 points.
Practice is at 4 p.m. ET Friday, followed by Kennametal Pole Qualifying at 5:05 p.m. ET (FS1). Corey Heim started on pole position and finished runner-up in last year’s race.
–NASCAR Wire Service–