NASCAR Camping World Truck Series veteran Jason White made his fifth start of 2014 with NTS Motorsports at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and his first behind the wheel of the No.20 GunBroker.com Chevrolet Silverado with Crew Chief Chris Rice on top of the pit box. The Rhino Linings 350 was White’s seventh career start at the “Sin City” track after five starts in the NCWTS and 1 in the NASCAR Nationwide Series in 2013.
All of the on-track action for White and his No.20 team would be comprised into a single day of activity with two early morning practice sessions. Chris Rice elected to work in exclusively with a race-trim package forgoing the standard “mock-qualifying run”. White would post 41 total laps throughout both sessions with a top speed of 170.973 and would stand 20th in both rounds.
As teams prepared for NCWTS Knockout Qualifying, round one went according to plan. Jason White would advance into the second session after a lap time of 31.540 and would sit 15th going into a 10-minute segment to fight for a position inside the top 12. Round 2 would see a late caution displayed just before time expired and Jason, coming to pit road to make sure the track was clear, was not recorded as having posted a lap time. Jason would claim a spot in 21st for the lineup and would have to make his way forward during the evening’s 146-lap main event.
Once the green was displayed for The Rhino Linings 350, White and Rice began formulating a strategy to get the most out of a fast truck and work their way out of a starting spot near the back of the field after the issue during qualifying. During the initial run White had worked his way inside the top 15 before seeing the competition caution at lap 30. Chris Rice made the call for fuel only to get on a different tire strategy than the rest of the field and to gain some valuable track position. At lap 35, the No.20 truck would line up inside the top 10 and continued his move forward and was running his fastest laps of the weekend working lap 45. On lap 55, White was involved with an incident on track and a competitor made contact with the No.20 Chevrolet. White was sent into the outside wall exiting turn four and the damage was deemed critical and the No.20 was unable to continue the race. At the end of the night, White’s top-10 run was relegated to a 23rd finishing position but the team gained a lot of positive momentum and overcame numerous hurdles throughout the weekend. The next event on the NCWTS schedule is October 18th, 2014 at Talladega Superspeedway after a two week break.
Jason White’s Post Race Thoughts: “I have to thank GunBroker.com, Chris Rice, and the entire No.20 Chevrolet Silverado team for a great truck this weekend. We struggled to gain speed during practice but had remedied the issue going into qualifying. I believe that if not for the issue during the 2nd session we could have made our way into the top 12 to fight for the pole. The truck had hooked up and was as fast as it had been all weekend and we were running well inside the top 10 when we were involved in an on-track incident that, unfortunately, took us out of the running. It was a positive weekend for us though and we learned a lot together going into our next event in the NCWTS.”
Crew Chief Chris Rice’s Post Race Thoughts: “My entire team worked so hard all weekend and we had a truck that could run at the front of the pack. It was a racing deal that took us out of the event and something that you can’t plan for but we were getting faster with every lap we logged. I am proud of the efforts the GunBroker.com made throughout the Las Vegas weekend and I think we have a lot of momentum and confidence going into Talladega in a couple of weeks.”
NTS Motorsports PR
