Fort Kent’s Austin Theriault will miss the next two races in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series as he continues to recover from the back injury he suffered in a crash involving his Brad Keselowski Racing teammate Tyler Reddick on Oct. 3.
But he is hopeful he will return for the final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 20.
The 21-year-old Theriault, who suffered a 10 percent compression fracture in his lower back in the crash, said he feels much better but doctors have ruled him out of the races at Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway the next two weekends.
The race at Homestead-Miami will be his final race in the No. 29 Standard Ford F-150 because BKR announced Daniel Hemric will join the team as a full-time driver along with Reddick next season.
Hemric will be supported financially by partners California Clean Power and Cequent. BKR also hopes to field a third team with a variety of drivers.
Reddick is running third in points in the Camping World Truck series while Hemric is seventh with NTS Motorsports.
Theriault will look for sponsorship partners and try to land with another team in either the Truck or NASCAR Xfinity series. He ran three Xfinity races for JR Motorsports in 2014.
Theriault agrees with his doctors.
“The bone scan doesn’t lie. The back is a crucial part of the body, and I plan to be racing for a long time to come,” Theriault said Wednesday. “So I have to be careful. The bone needs a couple more weeks to harden up in order for it to be safe.
“To be successful, you have to be close to 100 percent. It’s not fair to my team, to myself and to my sponsors to risk further injury,” Theriault added. “To miss a couple of races in order to be able to run 300 races is well worth it.”
Theriault had a 13-race deal with BKR but he has only run eight of them because of the crash, which occurred when Reddick lost control of his truck, slid down the track and sideswiped Theriault which sent him careening up the track into the outside wall. There wasn’t a SAFER, or Steel and Foam Energy Reduction, barrier where he hit.
He had four top-10 finishes and two top-five in the eight races.
“It’s unfortunate. I had this long stretch of races lined up, and I think we would have had a ton of success. But something happened that was out of our control, and that took the wind out of my sails,” Theriault said. “But I’ll hit the reset button and, hopefully, I’ll get back on the horse before the end of the year.”
It will be a challenge to attract the right sponsors, but he feels good about the future.
“I’ve got that never-give-up attitude. I’m looking to come back stronger, healthier and more successful than I’ve been in the past,” he said.