Delivering his fifth top-20 finish of the season this past weekend at Kansas Speedway, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) rookie Justin Fontaine (@driverFontaine) is ready for business on home turf in Friday night’s North Carolina Education Lottery 200 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway.
The Asheville, N.C. native has never been to the unique 1.5-mile superspeedway, located just miles from the Queen City, but the freshman driver is eager to get to the track and contend for his third top-10 of the year with his Niece Motorsports team.
“Heck yeah, I’m ready for Charlotte,” said Fontaine. “We had an OK finish at Kansas. Of course, we always want a little more, but we have some good notes from Kansas that we can apply to Charlotte and come off the truck strong.”
Visiting a new track for the fourth time this season, Fontaine says it’s important for him to get up to speed as quickly as possible, so his Darrell Morrow-led team can shift its concentration towards race setup.
“I embrace each new track I have the opportunity to compete at,” added Fontaine. “Las Vegas brought our team our second top-10 finish at a place I’ve never been to before. That was exciting. Charlotte is going to be a tough race though. It’s not a traditional mile-and-a-half track, but it has some great characteristics.
“We’ll have to do a lot of the same at Charlotte that we did at Kansas last weekend. We practiced in the day, qualified in the later afternoon and raced at night. The biggest obstacle we’ll face is just making sure our No. 45 ProMATIC Automation Chevrolet is just as strong at night – as we expect it to be during the day. It’s a challenge – but one we plan to conquer.
“I’ve also done some studying of the race from last year and it seems there was a ton of drafting. We had a truck that drafted pretty well at Las Vegas too. Hopefully, we can play our cards right and when that checkered flag waves we’ll have another top-10 finish to talk about.”
After six races, Fontaine sits 13th in the series’ standings. He carries an average finish of 17.0 entering Charlotte.
In addition to a full-time NASCAR driver, Fontaine is also a freshman student at the University of North Carolina (Charlotte), where he is pursuing a business degree.
For more on Justin Fontaine, please visit JustinFontaine.com, like his Facebook page (Justin Fontaine) or follow him on Twitter @driverFontaine.
The North Carolina Education Lottery 200 (134 laps | 201 miles) is the sixth of 23 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races on the 2018 schedule. Practice begins on Fri., May 18 from 9:05 a.m. – 9:55 a.m. A final practice session is set for 10:35 a.m. – 11:25 a.m. Qualifying is set for later in the day beginning at 4:40 p.m. The 32-truck field will take the green flag shortly after 8:30 p.m. with live coverage on FOX Sports 1, the Motor Racing Network (Radio) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Satellite Radio, Channel 90). All times are local (Eastern).
Justin Fontaine PR
