The 2024 Craftsman Truck Series season is officially underway, and fans were treated to a choppy, caution filled race at Daytona International Speedway to open the season.
The race saw 12 cautions (a series-high at Daytona) for 52 laps. As the race was 101 total laps, the race ran more laps at pace car speed than race car speed, which contributed to the lowest average speed in Truck Series history at Daytona.
A lot of those 12 cautions were due to crashes, and lap 6 served as an omen to the night when the Big One struck early, taking out several contenders. By the end of the race, only 21 trucks were running at the finish –- there would’ve been even less if the last lap crash that decimated what was left of the field happened earlier in the race.
But Daytona is finally behind us, and now it’s on to Atlanta Motor Speedway: another superspeedway-esque race.
Wonderful.
Surely, team owners can’t be too happy about the idea that we’re starting the season with two races that could, for some teams, potentially destroy their entire fleet of trucks at the shop.
Well, there’s a good chance they are frustrated. A look at the entry list for the truck race at Atlanta only corroborates that notion.
According to the official entry list for the Fr8 Auctions 208 (see below), it shows just 33 trucks entered for the race. An official Truck Series race allows 36 to qualify, so it will be a smaller field for the series.
Forty trucks entered Daytona, which means seven teams will not return for Atlanta. But actually, that number is eight, because one of the entries for Atlanta is the No. 66 of Conner Jones, a fifth ThorSport Racing entry that did not go to Daytona.
So, who pulled out after Daytona, and why?
Let’s start with the four drivers who failed to qualify at Daytona: Jennifer Jo Cobb, Clay Greenfield, Ryan Huff, and Mason Maggio. Of those four drivers, only one was not driving for their own team, and that was Maggio, driving for the brand new Floridian Motorsports.
While Floridian’s schedule is unknown, it did announce that it would be a late entry at Atlanta with Maggio – the original…
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