NEWTON, Iowa -- A trying week for ThorSport Racing culminated with two of its trucks earning top-four finishes in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Speediatrics 200 at Iowa Speedway.
A fire on Monday morning at ThorSport Racing's shop in Sandusky, Ohio, left the team with an estimated 40 percent of the shop destroyed, according to David Pepper, the team's general manager. The team spent its week salvaging what it could from the race shop and working on its trucks in the vacant parking lot of a Kroger grocery store, among other sites.
Despite the circumstances, Ben Rhodes came home fourth, a career-best for him in the Truck Series, while Cameron Hayley earned a third-place finish at the 0.875-mile track. Matt Crafton also spent a good part of the race in the top five before finishing in eighth place, while Rico Abreu finished 18th.
Rhodes looked to have the truck to beat on long runs -- second-place finisher Cole Custer even mentioned how Rhodes looked better than his No. 00 JR Motorsports Chevrolet throughout the night. However, two cautions over the final 22 laps and a red flag (that lasted 5 minutes, 46 seconds) hindered his chances to get to the lead.
"The red flag is really what hurt us there," Rhodes said on pit road after the race. "The tires got a heat cycle on them and for those that don't know, it really affects the handling of a race car. Plus, being on the bottom (on restarts).
"The combination of that was not good for us. If we could have kept going and didn't have those cautions or even restarted on the outside, we would have been in a lot better shape."
The events of the past week also weighed heavy on the rookie's mind as he talked about the finish.
"It's a good reward for how hard they worked this week out in the sun, moving stuff around," Rhodes said. "I mean hours and hours and hours on the clock. We were able to bring it here in kind of a culminating event. It was a race of highs and lows for us, but I think they can all appreciate what we were able to accomplish tonight."
As the first truck on four new tires after a Lap 150 pit stop, teammate Hayley looked to be in position to win if the race stayed green. But it didn't.
"We thought we were in the driver's seat getting four tires instead of two," Hayley said. "But at the end of the race there, we needed a 20- or 30-lap run in order to do any damage, and we just had short runs there at the end."
The 19-year-old Calgary, Alberta, native does more than just drive for ThorSport: he was part of the cleanup effort after the Sunday night fire at the shop.
"It's been a tough week at ThorSport to say the least," Hayley said. "I was a part of that first-hand. I got called up Monday morning. I was there at 5:30 and we probably spent upwards of 36 hours, both me and the team, cleaning trucks, getting things ready, working out of a parking lot trying to get to this race.
"A third-place finish is not just amazing for me but the whole organization. We really came together as a team."