Hours after capturing his first career pole Rajah Caruth topped that by winning his first ever race in NASCAR. Caruth took the checkered flag on Friday night at the Victoria’s Voice Foundation 200 presented by Westgate Resorts.With the victory Caruth became just the third African-American to win a race in one of NASCAR’s National Series.
Caruth was in second place after stage one and third place after the second stage of the race. The No. 71 Chevrolet pulled off a crucial pit stop at lap 102 amongst some crucial errors by his competitors. On that series of stops on that lap Ty Majeski and Nick Sanchez were too fast entering the pits and Kyle Busch had a safety violation. All three drivers were in the top ten prior to the violations.
Two laps later Corey Heim had an extended 22 second pit stop, losing vital track position in the process. Caruth inherited the lead after the pit stops cycled through at lap 114 and would lead it for the final 20 laps and the win. Heim was closing in on Caruth but ran out of time and couldn’t overcome the bad stop, he finished in third place, Tyler Ankrum was second. Caruth led a total of 38 laps in the 134 lap race in Las Vegas.
“It’s surreal, thank you so much to Hendrickcars.com, Mr. H for putting me in this thing all year, along with the men and women at Spire (motorsports) They’ve had a lot of work this winter and the decal shop has been working really hard to. Glad to get the win for team Chevy, can’t thank my family enough, so many people helped me get to this point. I can’t believe it,” Caruth said after exiting his truck.
He was fresh off doing a burnout on the front stretch of the track in Las Vegas while being interviewed by Fox Sports reporter Josh Sims. His big embrace with his father, Roger Caruth, was captured on the broadcast as the entire race team swarmed Rajah Caruth after the win.
Wendell Scott and Bubba Wallace, a friend and mentor to Caruth, are the only other two African American drivers to win national series races in NASCAR.
Earlier in the week Caruth was awarded a full season of primary sponsorship from Hendrickcars.com. Hendrick had previously agreed to sponsor the truck for just 10 of the 23 races this season in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Caruth will have a little while to celebrate this win, the truck series is off next weekend before returning to action on March 16, at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.
Caruth is currently a senior at Winston-Salem State University.
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
