Rhodes looks to take next step into national series

K&N Pro Series East champ, 17, eyes move up

RELATED: More coverage from Home Tracks | Learn more about Ben Rhodes

For most high school students, the turn from spring into summer can come with a sharp decline in productivity, merely clicking off the days before vacation time. Ben Rhodes, however, was just getting warmed up.

The 17-year-old product of Louisville, Kentucky, made the most of the seasonal transition with four consecutive wins in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East. The string helped Rhodes secure the series championship with one race remaining, a run he capped off with a 15th-place finish last weekend at Dover International Speedway.

Rhodes’ season-ending tally of five wins and six pole positions is impressive enough; only Dylan Kwasniewski (six wins in 2013) and Joey Logano (five wins in 2007) have posted similar numbers. The streak of four victories in a row, though, only raised the degree of difficulty.

“It felt really good; I probably should have enjoyed it more while it was happening because you don’t realize what you have until its gone,” said Rhodes, a member of the current NASCAR Next class of up-and-coming drivers.”… Once it’s gone, you realize how sweet it really was. We’re working for it again. We’ve been trying this whole time to get some wins and create another streak, but we’ve just got to be more on top of our game with some of these races.”

Rhodes started off strong, qualifying on the front row in each of the first four races. He was on the pole position at Bristol Motor Speedway in March for one of the series’ signature events, and while missing out on his first career victory with a third-place finish left a sour taste, he realized then that his Turner Scott Motorsports team had the potential for something special.

“I’d say that was where it started. We carried that one for a long time, carried it throughout the year,” Rhodes said. “The competition has really gotten tougher — they’re very good at what they do. They’re all very talented. It’s hard to race against these guys week in, week out. We all know each other pretty well, so we can kind of predict what we’re going to do on the race track, so that’s fun. It’s been an interesting challenge for me this year, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’d say we clicked around Bristol and from there, it’s gotten only better.”

After Bristol, the wins came in bunches. Rhodes dominated at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina the following week for his first victory in the series, a triumph that vaulted him to a lead in the standings that he would never relinquish. After a runner-up effort at Richmond in April, the stunning streak of wins at Iowa Speedway, Bowman Gray Stadium, Five Flags Speedway and Langley Speedway gave Rhodes a commanding advantage. Rhodes held serve the rest of the way with three more top-fives, finishing with a 60-point edge in the K&N East standings over Canadian standout Cameron Hayley.

All the while, he faced the rigors of school work, forcing a delicate balancing act with the series’ 16-race schedule — a Victory Lane celebration one day, pre-calculus problems and research papers the next. Meeting goals on both fronts wasn’t easy, but Rhodes had a game face for each one.

“It’s hard, really hard. … It’s always hard just because it’s hard to switch that focus,” Rhodes said. “Once you get to the race track, I go into race mode and everything else is blocked out so it’s hard to just switch your focuses like that. The school works with me very well, but it’s still very hard for me to just switch the focus. I’m ready to be out, ready to focus on my racing career.”

Rhodes has already ventured into what may be his next steps, notching two top-10 finishes in his three appearances in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series this season. While nothing is set in stone for 2015, Rhodes pulled no punches about where he’d like to be next year.

“I would love to be running one of the national series, either the Camping World Truck Series or the XFINITY Series, but either way, I think the XFINITY Series will be much better and easier for me to transition into with the cars,” Rhodes said. “The trucks from what I understand so far, they’re a little bit different for the aero package and it’s harder to get used to for me. I’ve gotten used to the radial tires now, so that was a really big step. But no plans right now. We’re still working on some sponsorship opportunities and talking to teams. We’ll see what we get lined up and hopefully here in the next couple months we’ll have something.”

MORE: