Garcia Scores Top-10 in Kansas Speedway Debut
Venue: Kansas Speedway
FINISH: 8th
Start: 4th
Laps Led: 0
NCTS Point Standings Position: 13th
Jake Garcia continued his impressive season with an eighth-place finish on Saturday night in his first appearance at Kansas Speedway. The driver of the No. 35 Adaptive One Chevrolet Silverado RST posted his fourth top-10 finish of the season in seven starts and moved to within 24 points of the cut line for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (NCTS) playoffs. After eight events in the regular season, Garcia is 13th in the NCTS championship standings and lowered his average finish to 11.3.
Garcia once again turned heads in qualifying by stopping the clock at 31.05 seconds, the fourth-fastest lap of the session and his best-career qualifying effort. While he settled into the eighth position in the opening laps, Garcia asserted himself as one of the most consistent trucks in the field. The event’s first yellow flag on lap 20 created a split strategy among the field, and Garcia stayed on track to run for stage points at lap 30. New tires would win out on the lap 28 restart and Garcia was scored 15th at the end of Stage 1 on lap 30.
Crew chief Mark Hillman and the Adaptive One team equipped Garcia with four tires, fuel, and multiple chassis adjustments to improve his loose handling condition. After restarting 25th on lap 37, Garcia advanced to 16th before a caution on lap 49 allowed him an opportunity to pit again. Taking four tires and fuel under the caution allowed him to advance to 13th at the end of Stage 2 on lap 60 and flip track position when the event resumed on lap 68.
Garcia restarted the final stage in sixth position but dropped outside the top-10. After regaining his momentum, Garcia rejoined the top 10 on lap 85. The final pit stop of the night came during a lap 93 caution period and Garcia made forward progress the rest of the night. Despite driving through a tight balance in Turns 3 and 4, Garcia took the eighth position on lap 117 and ran there until the checkered flag. The eighth-place finish marked Garcia’s third top-10 result in the last four race and gained nine markers on the playoff bubble position.
Jake Garcia Quote:
“It’s good to get another top-10 finish with our Adaptive One Chevrolet, and we can keep getting better for sure. We had a great qualifying lap that put us towards front, but we were a little too loose to start, and got on the tight side that last run. We were still able to move forward and gain some spots the last run, but we’ll go back and see what we can do to improve. It’s great to be able to close these races, but we need to keep piling on points so we can chase down a playoff spot.”