For the first time since 2012, Fort Kent’s Austin Theriault will be racing for a points championship.
The 22-year-old Theriault is going to run the full 14-race K&N Pro Series East schedule. He ran one K&N Pro Series East race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2012 after winning the Young Guns competition, and he finished 19th.
He has already run the first two races, winding up 24th in the Jet Tools 150 at New Smyrna Speedway (Florida) because of a flat tire and rear end problems before he rallied for a fourth-place finish last weekend at the Mobile 150 in Alabama.
He is driving a Don Valley Toyota for team owner Shigeaki Hattori. Veteran John Monsam, the Sprint Cup crew chief for 12 races with Newburgh’s Ricky Craven in 1999, is his crew chief.
Monsam has 125 Xfinity races and 223 Truck Series races under his belt.
Theriault said his partnership with Monsam is ideal.
“He’s a veteran crew chief, and I’m a young driver,” said Theriault.
“I’m excited about being able to race for a full season,” he added. “I’m looking forward to running for a championship.”
Cherryfield’s Andy Santerre, who was the general manager and shop foreman for the Hattori Racing Enterprises Team in the K&N Pro Series East and ARCA circuits, said Theriault is in good hands.
“It’s a good fit. There’s a pretty good bunch over there with Hattori. They’ll take good care of him,” said Santerre. “John has worked for a lot of different people. He’s a good guy, he knows what he’s doing, and he’s a hard worker. John and Austin will make a good pair.”
Santerre said the K&N Series is a “great place to race.”
“There’s a lot of short tracks so you learn how to race side-by-side,” said Santerre, who won four consecutive K&N Pro Series East points championships (2002-05).
“It’s a really tough series. There is a lot of competition,” he added. “I told Austin he needs to keep his name out there.”
During the off weekends, Theriault said he will run his own Super Late Model car.
“I’ll just be racing for wins [in the Super Late Models],” he said.
Theriault’s next race will be the Kevin Whitaker Chevrolet 150 on March 26 at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina.
Last year, Theriault had a 13-race deal in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for Brad Keselowski Racing and ran nine of those races. An accident that resulted in a compression fracture in his lower back sidelined him for four races. He had four top-10 finishes including two top-fives in his nine races.
Two years ago, he ran three Xfinity races for JR Motorsports before spending 2013 as a developmental driver for Brad Keselowski Racing.
He drove a truck for Keselowski in the NextERA Resources 250 in February and led a race-high 31 laps only to have a late-race accident relegate him to a 27th-place finish at Daytona International Speedway.