Earns eighth-place tie in points after first Camping World Truck Series campaign
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Ben Kennedy closed his first full NASCAR Camping World Truck Series campaign with a tie for eighth place in the final standings, ending with a 17th-place finish in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
While Friday night’s result wasn’t what he wanted, he was left in awe over his season-long achievement — the 2014 Sunoco Rookie of the Year award.
“This was something kind of on my bucket list this year,” said Kennedy, the 22-year-old great-grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. “I think everyone wants to get Rookie of the Year their first year, and it’s awesome to get it. I’m definitely humbled by it, and I’m looking forward to the future and seeing what we can do in the future.”
Kennedy added his name to the list of the truck series’ rookie award winners, a star-studded group that includes current Sprint Cup Series stars Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Austin Dillon and Carl Edwards. As satisfying as claiming the award was for the driver, the accomplishment and growth wasn’t lost on his proud mother, Lesa France Kennedy, International Speedway Corporation CEO and Vice Chairperson of NASCAR.
“He said it’s been a great learning experience, and not just from a competition standpoint, but from the overall sport and how it all comes together,” she said. “That’s been a wonderful experience; it has been for me, and I think it is for him as well.”
Ben Kennedy opened and closed the season in his home state of Florida, starting the season with a Keystone Light Pole Award and multiple laps led when the curtain was lifted at Daytona International Speedway. In between the season’s bookends, he amassed seven top-10 finishes in 22 races, holding off challenger Tyler Reddick for rookie honors.
While Kennedy said he’d hoped for more consistency during the course of the season, he never dipped out of the top 10 in standings after the Daytona opener.
“We just had a string of bad luck really, just kind of oddball things, flat tires with a couple laps to go and broken studs and running out of gas here and there,” Kennedy said. “But I think if you look at the whole season altogether and our really strong runs, I think when we were on, we were really on. We were up there with the top dogs, and when we were off, we struggled a little bit, but we worked hard and we worked together to make the most out of each position and each lap.”
Kennedy said his plans for 2015 hadn’t fallen completely into place and that he was still working on ironing out the next steps.
“Hopefully we’ll announce something here in the offseason,” Kennedy said. “Just trying to figure out all the small pieces.”
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