FORT WORTH, Texas — For Lawless Alan, much of his career in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series has been a struggle.
In 60 career starts, Alan has one top 10 finish, a 10th at Talladega Superspeedway last year. He has also failed to finish 20% of his starts and has an average finish of 24.3.
For this year, Alan made the move over to Reaume Brothers Racing along with sponsors Auto Park-It and Auto Charge-It. So far, there have been handling problems, but progress has been made.
At Texas Motor Speedway Friday night (April 12), Alan scored an 11th-place finish after running most of the final 30 laps in the top 10. It is his best-ever finish on an unrestricted oval.
“[We were] pretty solid tonight, certainly the best we’ve been on an intermediate [track],” Alan told Frontstretch. “We’re a long ways from perfect, but we got very lucky with when [the caution for Layne Riggs‘ crash] came out.
“We were sitting in the Lucky Dog [free pass] spot, and there was no way that we could come in while sitting in the Lucky Dog spot until we absolutely have to. We got lucky there, but we’ve been unlucky plenty of times before.
Alan feels that the finish is a true reflection of their pace for much of the evening. While strategy and luck got him up toward the front, he didn’t fall away from the leaders in a hurry.
With 26 laps to go after Riggs’ crash, Alan restarted in seventh. He held onto his position during the short run before the crash involving Kris Wright and Stewart Friesen brought out a yellow. He dropped a couple of positions on the next short run before Matt Crafton, Grant Enfinger and Dean Thompson crashed in turn 3.
On the final restart with 10 laps to go, Alan was ninth and hung with the leaders, even moving up a spot and doing battle with Zane Smith and Daniel Dye, who ended up finishing fifth and sixth. However, quicker drivers such as Ty Majeski ran him down in the final laps, dropping him to 11th.
Alan was fairly inexperienced before moving up. He has made only five starts in what is now ARCA Menards Series West (one of which was a conjunction race with the ARCA Menards Series) and one in ARCA Menards Series East before moving into the Trucks.
More recently, Alan has received some assistance. Starting at The Milwaukee Mile last August when he was still at Niece Motorsports, 1995 Truck Series champion Mike Skinner came on to serve as Alan’s driver coach. It has been a learning experience for…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …