Matt Tifft Finally Cashing In his Winning Lottery Ticket

After inking a six-race deal to drive for Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) in 2015 last November, 18-year-old Matt Tifft will make his long-awaited debut behind the wheel of the No. 51 ToyotaCare Tundra in Friday night’s North Carolina Education Lottery 200 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway.

 

Knowing that the KBM deal was in the works late last year, Tifft began building his resume in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in an effort to be approved to run all the tracks on his schedule this season, which includes the Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway race in October. He registered an impressive eighth-place finish in his Truck Series debut last October at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway and posted an average finish of 16.3 across his three 2014 starts. The Ohio native also competed for Ken Schrader Racing in the ARCA Racing Series last season, collecting five top-five and seven top-10 finishes across 10 starts, including a runner-up finish at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta.

 

While his primary focus in 2015 will be on his KBM schedule, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte business student knew that he needed to complement those races by running for other Truck Series teams and in other racing series in order to keep his skills behind the wheel sharp. The Ohio native has competed in three of the four Truck Series races this season with Venturini Motorsports, producing a season-best ninth-place finish at Martinsville. He also has made two starts for Ken Schrader Racing in the ARCA Racing Series, opening the season with a sixth-place finish at Mobile (Ala.) International Speedway and following it up with a runner-up finish at Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville, Tenn.

 

One-hundred and eighty days will have passed between the time that it was announced Tifft would drive for KBM last November and his first start for the team this Friday night. When he signed to drive for the winningest active team in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series he felt like he had just scratched off a winning lottery ticket, now the talented youngster is finally getting to cash that ticket in – fittingly enough in the North Carolina Education Lottery 200.

KBM PR