Last November, Tyler Ankrum went into the Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway with a chance at winning the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series title. This year, after a rough regular-season, the McAnally-Hilgemann Racing driver just had to fight to get into the 10-driver post-season.
The driver of the No. 18 LiUNA! Chevrolet Silverado hasn’t finished better than ninth place since Nashville Superspeedway at the end of May, seven races ago, and by the time Saturday’s Team EJP 175 rolled around, the San Bernardino, California-native was in danger of falling outside the top-10 in points.
That made it so that Saturday’s event at New Hampshire needed to be problem-free. It wasn’t.
After driving into the top-15 and having one of his main points rivals, Stewart Friesen, in sight, Ankrum suffered some kind of brake issue, which had the brake pedal on his No. 18 go right to the floor as the 25-year-old was entering Turn 3 – no doubt, a scary feeling considering the speeds being carried at the 1.058-mile racetrack.
With some insight and advice from Eddie D’Hondt, one of the most veteran spotters in NASCAR, Ankrum was able to fix half his problem by just adjusting things in the Truck, but for the final half of the race he still had no rear brakes.
Against all odds, and thanks to a couple of late-race cautions (one of which he barely avoided), Ankrum was able to bring his McAnally-Hilgemann Racing entry home in 16th-place, and somehow, seven points ahead of Stewart Friesen.
“I’m not happy. I’m happy we made it, but I’m not happy,” Ankrum said post-race. “I just wish we would frickin’ just have a normal day, you know? We had a lot of mechanical issues at the beginning of the year, and I thought we were past that; I thought we were over it. We had another one today. Luckily, Friesen had his misfortunes last week. If he didn’t and we were probably going to beat him by one or two points at Richmond, we’re out; he’s in, so that’s the silver lining.”
Even with a strong fourth-place finish at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday, Stewart Friesen won’t get the opportunity to race for a championship, due to his misfortune at Richmond last weekend that cost him a ton of points.
Friesen missed out on the tenth and final spot by just seven points.
“It was what it was,” Friesen said post-race. “Proud of the Halmar [Friesen Racing] team. We just didn’t bring enough speed all year. We battled today; Bruce [Cook] made a good call to get two tires, and up in the front we got the balance close and found a lane I could work with. It’s a bummer. I think we’re a top-10 team; we just had some misfortune at Richmond last week and some other times through the season. It is what it is; we’ll just go back to work and keep building this team up and get better. I promise you that.”
Jake Garcia was also in the mix with Ankrum and Friesen for the final spot in The Chase, and had the position at times throughout the 175-lap race, but suffered from a botched pit stop after Stage 2 (where Garcia pitted with his right-front over the line, a tail-end penalty), which cost him more than 20 positions.
The Monroe, Georgia-native was involved in an early-race incident, but the damage to the rear end of the Quanta Services-sponsored machine didn’t do much harm, per Garcia. It was the pit penalty, along with the final two overtime restarts, that dropkicked the No. 98 out of contention.
“[It] just didn’t go our way there,” Garcia said. “At the end of Stage 2, I thought we were in the green but had a terrible pit cycle there – I didn’t do my job. Had to restart 27th, tail of the field, so going from leading to last is not good. We were able to come back up through the field pretty good, up to seventh there at the end, and then on the final restart just got really bottled up on the bottom, tried to go bottom of three[-wide], got blocked, and just got stacked up.”
Garcia, in his fourth season full-time in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series, didn’t make The Chase this season (in a new format), after making it under the old win-and-you’re-in format one year prior.
“Lost a bunch of spots in the last lap, I was trying to make something happen, but I don’t think, no matter what I did, I was going to catch the No. 18 in points based on what I’ve seen,” Garcia added. “So, really proud of our effort for our Quanta Services F-150. We were really fast today; I thought we were a top-five truck, for sure, but just messed up and didn’t keep track of position when we had it and had to fight back through the field.”
Friesen and Garcia, separated by four points, will fight for 11th in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series point standings on the year, while Ankrum goes forward in an attempt to recover his season and make a run at the championship.
Photo: McAnally-Hilgemann Racing
