Despite missing the first race due to being underage, rookie Jake Garcia has perhaps become an unlikely threat to win the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Rookie of the Year.
With a stout rookie class filled with up-and-coming champions such as Nick Sanchez, Taylor Gray and Daniel Dye, Garcia has been able to rack up several strong finishes, seemingly under the radar.
In his five starts thus far on the season, Garcia has three top 10s, including a most recent sixth on the dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway. However, with Sanchez threatening for his first career win for a while, Garcia has largely gone unrecognized. In fact, McAnally-Hilgemann Racing, Garcia’s team, has had some major improvements this season.
The team’s flagship No. 19 team made a driver change in the offseason, tabbing Christian Eckes to drive in replacement of Derek Kraus, who had been with the team full time since 2020. The addition of Eckes has arguable helped the entire team improve. In six races, Eckes has already nabbed a win this season, the team’s first in the Truck Series, and started out the season with three straight top 10s.
Meanwhile, Garcia’s No. 35, which is essentially the old No. 91 that was piloted by Colby Howard in 2022, started off the season with Chase Elliott at Daytona International Speedway. Elliott gave Garcia confidence in his truck, as he finished 10th in place of the then-17-year-old.
Garcia then backed that up with a 10th-place finish of his own at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on his 18th birthday. After some mid-pack finishes at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Circuit of the Americas, he has reeled off two straight top 10s, finishing fifth at Texas Motor Speedway and the aforementioned sixth-place finish at Bristol.
Garcia’s strong start to the season is actually a little bit surprising. He attempted six races for MHR last season in a third truck, his No. 35. He made five, failing to qualify for the spring Martinsville Speedway race, and he was only able to nab a best finish of 16th, at the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. However, one could attribute those struggles to MHR spreading its crew thin with three teams instead of two.
Garcia (as well as Gray) was granted a waiver by NASCAR to qualify for the playoffs despite missing a race due to his age, and while it might have been expected that Gray could compete for a playoff spot, Garcia could easily sneak his way…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …