NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Overview:
Event: SpeedyCash.com 250, Race 5 of 23, 167 Laps – 77/45/45; 250.5 Miles
Location: Texas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile, quad-oval)
Date/Broadcast: April 1, 2023, at 4:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR 90
Chase Purdy, Driver Q&A:
With the speed you’ve shown at the mile-and-a-half tracks are you looking forward to Texas this weekend?
“We’ve had really good speed at the first two races this year on mile-and-a-half tracks. KBM has done a really good job of bringing really dominant trucks to those places, not just this year, but years prior. I think this will be an opportunity for me to correct the mistakes I’ve made in the first two mile-and-a-half races and really put it all together and show that our Bama Buggies team can go out and starting contending for wins.”
How does racing at Texas compare to the other mile-and-a-half tracks on the Truck Series schedule?
“It’s less wide open. Turns Three and Four if your stuff is good you are going to want to be wide open, but Turns One and Two you are going to have to lift and with no substance down in the other lanes I feel like it is going to be one-lane dominant. Traditionally at mile-and-a-half tracks you can move around, but this one not so much. I think that is something to be aware of. With no live pit stops, track position is going to be more important so that will make qualifying even more important than it usually is.”
Will the earlier start time affect the handling of the trucks?
“It’s not going to be as hot as it would be if we were racing there in June, so I’m not sure that starting earlier will affect it that much. Normally when it is hot it makes it slicker. I think it will still be slick because nobody has been racing on it and we are going to be the first ones on track. I think that causes people to wreck when they try to get off the bottom and run up a little bit into the old substance that is there from before, but we won’t know until we get there.”
Chase Purdy Career Highlights:
- Across 56 career Truck Series starts, has produced 18 laps led and seven top-10 finishes. Posted career-best sixth-place result at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in 2021.
- Finished 16th in Truck Series championship standings in 2022.
- Finished fourth in the 2018 ARCA Menard’s Series championship standings after recording 84 laps led, 10 top-five and 14 top-10 finishes.
- Earned the 2017 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East rookie of the year honors and finished fourth in the championship standings after posting four poles, 200 laps led, five top-five and eight top-10 finishes across 14 starts.
- Won the prestigious Snowflake 100 Pro Late Model race at 5 Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., in Dec. of 2018.
Chase Purdy’s No. 4 Bama Buggies Silverado RST:
KBM-73: The No. 4 Bama Buggies team will unload KBM-73 for Saturday’s Speedycash.com 250 at Texas Motor Speedway. KBM-73 has two prior starts, both with John Hunter Nemechek last season. Nemechek finished third with the truck last year at Charlotte and then was relegated to a 35th-place finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
KBM-73 Performance Profile:
Starts | Wins | Average Start | Average Finish | Laps Led |
2 | 0 | 14.0 | 19.0 | 0 |
KBM Notes of Interest:
- KBM drivers have collected nine wins, four poles, 1065 laps led, 20 top-five and 38 top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 10.8 across 59 starts in the Lone Star State. KBM’s nine Texas wins are the most the organization has at any track.
- Erik Jones (2015) all have one Texas triumph.
- With his victory at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway last year, Corey Heim became the 18th different driver to win a Truck Series event for KBM. In addition to collecting a series-record seven Owner’s Championships, the organization has produced two championship-winning drivers: Erik Jones (2015) and Christopher Bell (2017).