Fort Kent’s Austin Theriault got his first taste of legendary Bristol (Tennessee) Motor Speedway on Saturday and finished 15th in the K and N Pro Series East race over the 0.533-mile banked concrete oval.
A mid-race wreck may have cost him a top-10 finish.
He currently sits 10th in the points after four of 14 races in the series while driving a Toyota for team owner Shigeaki Hattori.
“[Bristol] holds up to what everybody says about it,” said the 22-year-old Theriault. “It’s pretty fast. It’s good to be at a track with banking again. You can carry way more speed. It’s like a big bowl.
“At the same time, it was just another race track,” added Theriault. “The goal is always the same: be on the throttle as much as you can and carry as much speed as you can.
“We struggled to do that. We fought handling all weekend. We never got a good grasp on it. And we had some other challenges. We got forced into a wall right after a restart and had to salvage a finish at that point,” he said.
Theriault started 23rd among 29 drivers and finished three laps off the pace.
“We probably would have finished in the top 10 if it wasn’t for the wreck. [The other driver] said he didn’t see me. We had still been struggling with the handling but that made the problem worse,” said Theriault. “The [car’s] toe was messed up and we couldn’t really fix it without going [more] laps down.”
He said the track itself was a little different than he had anticipated.
“I used to think it was smoother than it is. It has gotten a few bumps over the years. It’s harder to pass than it looks like on TV because of the way the surface is now,” Theriault added. “Everybody seemed to be able to run the middle and the top. But you had a hard time passing on the bottom.”
Theriault said he and his team are “still growing.”
He has finished fourth, 14th and 24th in the other three races this year.
“It has been a challenge getting to where we have the speed we need to compete. Sometimes we aren’t able to do that. That has been the piece that has been holding us back a little,” said Theriault. “But we’re all trying to stay positive and we keep working on the cars. We keep moving stuff around to get it where we want it to be.”
Working with veteran crew chief John Monsam has been a positive experience for Theriault, who will run his first-ever road-course race the next time out on April 30 at Virginia International Raceway.
The Biscuitville 125 will be held over a 2.25-mile course that has 22 turns and 100 feet of elevation change.
“I’m experiencing a lot of new things this year. I’m building a notebook,” said Theriault. “You can’t make mistakes on a road course and there are more opportunities to make mistakes because there are more turns.”
Theriault, who ran nine Camping World Truck Series races a year ago and another one earlier this season for Brad Keselowski Racing, said he is in “discussions” about doing some more truck races but nothing has been finalized as yet.
Following the Biscuitville 125, there will be only one K and N Pro Series East race between April 30 and June 17: the Stafford 150 at Stafford Motor Speedway in Connecticut on May 30.