Fort Kent’s Austin Theriault had an eventful Friday.
The result was a 14th-place finish in the Toyota Tundra 250 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway.
It was his first time at the 1½-mile track.
The 21-year-old Theriault was driving his second of 13 races for Brad Keselowski Racing in the Truck Series and had to start in the back row (32nd) because he and his Keselowski teammate, Tyler Reddick, were forced to drive back-up Ford trucks after they wrecked their primary trucks during qualifying.
Reddick’s truck got loose during the second round of qualifying and hit the outside restraining wall before careening down the track and collecting Theriault, who was blinded by the smoke from Reddick’s truck.
In the Camping World Truck Series, trucks run together during qualifying and their fastest time is registered. The fastest 24 trucks in the first round of qualifying move on to the second round.
And since the race was later that night, Theriault was driving a backup truck he had never driven.
Compounding the problem was that the crews had to get two back-up trucks ready, one for each driver.
“If it’s just one truck, it’s all hands on deck. But with two, everybody was scrambling,” said Theriault.
Theriault said the crew can get the setup for the backup truck “close” to the primary truck but “every truck has its own identify.
“They guessed [on the setup] as well as they could. We were missing a little early in the race. We made changes during the race,” said Theriault.
Theriault also spun, which caused a caution.
He explained that air hitting the right side of the truck keeps the downforce but there was a truck on his right which took his air and downforce. That caused his truck to get loose and fishtail.
“That happens a lot at a fast track like Kansas. I was able to save it. Nobody ran into me. But we had to come down pit road and we got lapped,” he said.
Reddick finished 13th and both were two laps down to race winner Matt Crafton.
Reddick is second in points to Crafton. Theriault is 21st despite running just two of the four races.
Theriault said he was “disappointed.”
“We had good trucks. I wish we had been able to run our primary trucks,” said Theriault.
However, he also rationalized that things could have been a lot worse.
“Somebody could have hit me after I spun,” he said. “In that respect, it wasn’t that horrible of a finish even though I don’t like to lose.”
He will make some public appearances representing the No. 29 team’s primary sponsor: the Michigan-based Cooper-Standard Automotive Inc.’s Careers for Veterans.
Keselowski and Ryan Blaney will drive the No. 29 truck for the next two races before Theriault returns to drive three June races in successive weeks.