KANSAS CITY, Kan. — After topping off under the last caution with 53 to go, Ty Majeski and the ThorSport Racing No. 98 team looked to have played the perfect strategy in Friday night’s (Sept. 27) Kubota 200 at Kansas Speedway.
Corey Heim had a full head of steam with the dominant truck and was quickly running down No. 98 truck on a full tank of gas, but Majeski turned on the jets and stalled Heim’s progress to where he would only lose if he ran out of fuel.
Unfortunately for Majeski, that’s exactly what happened when he took the white flag.
“I thought I had saved enough,” Majeski told Frontstretch. “… I thought I had maximized it. Obviously one lap short.”
Majeski’s truck sputtered dry with four turns remaining, while Heim went from starting shotgun on the field to winning by more than seven seconds over second-place Layne Riggs.
“The No. 11 (Corey Heim) was coming, so I don’t know that I really could have saved a lot more and made it to the end and still won the race, unless I was just off on my technique,” Majeski said. “We’ll have to go back and see what I could have done better to save.”
With No. 11 truck rapidly closing in his rearview mirror, Majeski was left with two choices: save enough fuel, score a top five and lose the race, or run all out and risk running dry in order to have a chance at the win.
It may not have worked out, but Majeski wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I still think it was worth the gamble,” Majeski said. “I still like the call. We weren’t going to win the race the way it was. And at the end of the day, that’s all that mattered to us today.”
After all, second place doesn’t net a trophy, nor does it give Majeski any additional playoff points heading into the next round of the playoffs.
“Second does us no good,” Majeski said. “There were three laps that mattered to us tonight, and it was each stage and the end of the race for playoff points.”
And with Heim dominating the final two stages after charging from 33rd to third in the first 30 laps, fuel mileage was arguably the only way anyone else had a chance at pulling off the win.
“We had a strong truck tonight, just kind of lost the handle of it throughout the middle parts of the race and felt like our best shot to win was to gamble there, so that’s what we did,” Majeski said.
“Sometimes those go your way…
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