Strong Outing for Purdy at Darlington Ends Early

Chase Purdy’s top-15 run at Darlington Raceway resulted in a 34^th-place finish on Friday night after being involved in a multi-truck accident just 52 laps shy of the checkered flag. The driver of the No. 61 BAMA Buggies Toyota Tundra TRD Pro competed inside the top-15 for a significant portion of the event, but left Darlington 18^th in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series point standings after seven events.

 

Purdy qualified 22^nd on Friday afternoon, but immediately began advancing forward at the drop of the green flag. After pitting for four tires and chassis adjustments under the first caution flag at lap 20, Purdy rallied from 24^th position to finish Stage 1 in 18^th at lap 45. Crew chief Matt Lucas called him to pit road for a second four tire pit stop under the stage break when the HRE team ripped off a stunning pit stop to net him eight positions.

 

As a split pit strategy divided the field for the lap 55 restart, Purdy lined up 15^th and began to make some noise inside the top-15. He climbed to 13^th by lap 63 and bolted on another set of precious fresh tires under a caution at lap 74. He restarted 20^th on lap 79 and advanced to 17^th at the end of Stage 2 on lap 90 despite fighting a tight handling condition.

 

Purdy restarted in 13^th at lap 97, but hectic three-wide racing into Darlington’s narrow Turn three resulted in Purdy getting turned into the outside wall, causing terminal damage to Purdy’s Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. He was credited with a 34^th-place finish following post-race inspection.

 

“It’s not the way we wanted to end the night after having a pretty strong truck. We had a lot of speed and gotten ourselves in position to battle for a top-10. We really wanted to get a strong finish for Toyota with this weekend being their 1,500^th NASCAR race, but unfortunately, we took a pretty hard hit into Turn 3. A couple guys got crossed up on the exit of (turn) two, and we went to the bottom under both of them and we just all ran out of room getting into the corner and ended our night. I hate it for all the guys at HRE, but we’ll try to bounce back next weekend in Kansas.”

 

HRE PR