First of all, I have say, with all due respect to the Gander RV and Outdoor people, I am happy to see that this series is being renamed the Camping World Truck Series. I don’t know why, other than maybe because when I first started watching the Trucks regularly, it was called the Camping World Truck Series. (I never saw them, or on a very limited basis, as the Craftsman Truck Series.) The name Gander RV and Outdoor Truck Series is pretty long, plus it sounds like the word “Outdoor” is being used to describe the trucks. I mean, I don’t know there are many indoor trucks so it seems redundant to refer to them as “outdoor trucks” but I digress.
Even before COVID threw NASCAR (and the rest of the world) into chaos, the 2020 season was off to a sour note in the Truck series, as far as I’m concerned, with “the Bounty.” By all appearances, this was NASCAR’s insistence that there was no one in the series who could match Kyle Busch and the only recourse was to entice Cup drivers to come down and make a show of it.
I said it at the time and I will say it again: the one word I would use to describe “The Bounty” is “irresponsible.” In promoting “The Bounty,” NASCAR seemed to be sending a clear message to drivers, teams, fans, and perhaps most importantly, sponsors, there was no series regular worth investing your time and money on.
And even as a Chase Elliott fan, I was not cheering for Chase in the Charlotte Truck Race. Yeah, it’s great that Chase donated the money to charity but to me the true loser of the race was the series itself.
Thankfully, the series rebounded with a playoff that seemed like the most wide-open of any of NASCAR’s top-tier series. I say “seemed” to because the numbers really don’t add up to this not being the case. Of the 23 races in the Truck Series in 2020, five were won by Cup drivers (Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott). Only seven series regulars won races this season. 2020 Series Champion Sheldon Creed won five of the remaining races and Grant Enfinger (who had to win at Martinsville to advance to the Final Four at Pheonix) won four. No other driver in the series won more than two.
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention but it never seemed to me like Creed was dominating the series. To me, it seemed as if, once you got the Cup drivers out of the way, it was a toss-up as to who was going to win the race on any given week. That feeling of “anything can happen” led to much more exciting racing. This is not to say that, much like Xfinity and Cup races as well, there weren’t races where one driver was able to storm away from the field and you quickly realized even with a caution and a restart, no one else had much for him. However, from week to week, there was always the question of “Okay, who’s going to win this week?”
That sense of “anything can happen” extended to the playoffs. Yes, the statistics show that we should have expected Creed and Enfinger to be the dominate duo, the Truck Series equivalent of Harvick and Hamlin. And again, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention but I think someone could have made a credible argument about expecting to see Brett Moffitt, Austin Hill or Christian Eckes hoisting the trophy after Phoenix, which, in turn, led to a much more exciting playoff series.
Even on the final restart of the final race, you thought “Okay, it’s coming down to Enfinger and Moffitt” when Creed and Zane Smith pitted but before you knew it, there was Creed trying to outpace Smith and hanging on to win the championship.
And speaking of Smith, what does it say about the opportunities that can be found in the series when this 21-year-old rookie ended up finishing second? Even with two wins in 2020 for Smith, I don’t think anyone would have been faulted for thinking he would finish fourth out of the four championship contenders. With Smith having resigned with GMS Racing, one of the top truck teams, I’d say Smith might be headed back to the Final Four in 2021 and, either way, has a bright future ahead of him.
In the end, she didn’t quite achieve that goal. Instead she finished 16th. Yes, with literally not a mile of experience in a truck until the green flag fell, she managed to make up half the field!
She impressed the team at DGR-Crosley enough that they signed her to a full season in 2021. I was hoping she’d return for a full season in ARCA (which she may still announce) and run for the championship. However, as stated earlier she only finished outside the Top 10 in three races during the entire season, and every time I saw her, she was running in the Top 10. It may very well be a case where “what more does she need to prove?” I’m very excited to see what she can do in 2021, full-time in the Trucks. Check back for my “10 Bold Predictions for the 2021 Season” column (later this month) for my take on Deegan’s season.
In addition to Deegan’s arrival, there have been some movement during “Silly Season.” To the surprise of no one who was paying attention in the aftermath of the Phoenix race, former series champion Brett Moffitt has moved on from GMS Racing to Niece Motorsport. (He will also run the full Xfinity Series with Our Motorsports.) I say “no surprise” because immediately after the finish he lambasted his team for costing him wins throughout the season and then ultimately the championship. Not a really good look, Brett!
Speaking of Silly Season movement, John Hunter Nemechek has moved back to the Truck Series, taking a ride with Kyle Busch Motorsports after a rookie season in Cup with Front Row Motorsports. I don’t think there have been too many occasions where someone has dropped from Cup to the Trucks, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Nemechek had run in the Truck Series for his father’s team, NEMCO Racing, in years past. Nemechek will take over the #4 Toyota from 2020 Talladega-winner Raphael Lessard of Quebec. It’s assumed that Nemechek went to KBM because it is considered one of the top teams in the Truck Series, rather than being a mid-level team in the Cup Series.
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