BRISTOL, Tenn. — Ty Majeski has flown under the radar early in 2023, but his success can’t be ignored much longer.
The Wisconsin native short-tracker stormed to a runner-up finish in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race Saturday night on the dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway, his fifth top-six result in the first six events this season.
MORE: Full race recap | At-track photos
Majeski was a mainstay at the front of the field — often behind one-off teammate Joey Logano’s rear bumper — throughout a full-contact night on the half-mile bullring. Majeski said Logano’s No. 66 Ford was “probably just overall, just a little bit better” than his No. 98 truck, but Majeski made the defending Cup Series champion earn the win on the final restart with nine laps to go.
The end result was an impressive showing for ThorSport Racing, which landed three of its five trucks inside the top five with Matt Crafton’s fourth-place run.
“Just glad we got ThorSport in Victory Lane,” Majeski said. “Really cool to have all our trucks really run well all day today. I don’t know. I thought maybe, at times, I can maybe match him on the long run, it was starting to flip a little bit. And every time that was happening, we’d get a yellow. So I don’t know if we could have done anything with him, but I don’t know, maybe it just made him nervous. That probably would have been about it.”
Logano noticed that speed in his rear-view mirror — along with some help from first-time spotter Ryan Blaney.
“(Majeski) was fast in the heat race, started in the back, finished the second to us,” Logano said. “He looked to be a little bit better than us in the heat race. He was able to find some speed into (turn) three. That’s what I was saying earlier, how Blaney kind of relayed that information to me.”
In a race loaded with cautions — 11 yellow flags for 64 laps — Majeski often found himself restarting alongside Logano on the front row. Logano’s launches off the top lane propelled him to a significant advantage Majeski simply couldn’t overcome.
“I was just trying to keep heat in my tires. I just could not fire,” Majeski said. “It would take five laps. Like William Byron would get around me, and then I’d pass him back. I just could not get going on the restarts to fire. I don’t know if it was an air pressure thing or what, but I don’t know. We were just a little bit off tonight.”
Being a little off still resulted in Majeski’s best finish of the year to date. The defending Bristol winner — albeit a victory on concrete in September — has yet to finish worse than 11th through six Truck Series races this season and continues to build on the foundation built in 2022. Triumphs at Bristol and Homestead-Miami Speedway during last year’s playoffs launched Majeski and crew chief Joe Shear Jr. to the Championship 4, all in Majeski’s first full-time Truck Series season.
“We have fun doing this together, and I think that’s (where) a lot of it gets lost in the NASCAR world,” Majeski said. “Everyone takes it so seriously, and it’s a job. We legitimately have fun going to the race track together. We have a great, tightly-knit team, and we work well together. And when you’re going to the race track, and you’re excited to go, and you’re having fun, all those guys in the shop are gonna that extra little bit for you to make these trucks as good as they can. So we’re just clicking right now.
“Joe and I get along well. We talk every day, whether I’m at the shop or not. We’re putting good race trucks out there.”