It was the best of times and the worst of times for Rajah Caruth on Friday at the Darlington Motor Speedway. The Winston-Salem State senior had the biggest run of the night in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race before bad luck came calling.
The day started with a Darlington stripe for Caruth during qualifying when he scraped the wall and was forced to make repairs. The qualifying mishap forced Caruth to start from the back of the field when the race began on Friday night.
Caruth worked his way into 16th place by stage two of the race and then a little pit strategy turned everything around. A caution came out on lap 66 when Spencer Boyd spun out. Caruth was one of just five drivers who pitted and took four fires, he had to restart from the 26th position.
Within 16 laps Caruth had raced his way through the field and made it into the top five. Stage two ended three laps later and Caruth had made his way all the way to second place behind Corey Heim.
When the final stage of the race began Caruth started from the No. 8 position. He fell back from his second place position after a slow pit stop between stage two and stage three. Caruth slid through the pit box and was too close to the wall to allow his crew the ample amount of space required to perform the pit stop.
That position turned out to be the worst possible position in lieu of what was about to unfold. On the restart the No. 5 Toyota of Dean Thompson broke loose beneath Heim’s No. 11 Tundra at the exit from Turn 2 and ignited a wreck that severely damaged the trucks of Heim, Caruth, Layne Riggs and Matt Crafton.
Caruth, who had just displayed a truck that could cut through the field like a hot knife on butter, was eliminated from the race.
“It’s real tight there off of (Turn) 2, and the 5 just kind of lost it there,” Caruth said after exiting the infield care center. “We had a really fast truck. We’ll get ’em next time.”
Rajah Caruth ended up in 30th place at night’s end. Ross Chastain won the race which ended up going to overtime after a late caution forced extra laps. Caruth remains sixth in points in the championship race, he’s 111 points behind leader Christian Eckes.
He’s already qualified for this year’s playoffs after his first career win at Las Vegas earlier this year. The truck series moves on to North Wilkesboro next weekend.