TALLADEGA, Ala. — Put into a position with nothing to lose and everything to gain, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series drivers Daniel Hemric and John Hunter Nemechek have a simple plan for this weekend.
Swing for the fences, they both said.
Saturday’s fred’s 250 Powered by Coca-Cola at Talladega Superspeedway is the final race of the opening round of the inaugural Camping World Truck Series Chase. Only one Chase participant, William Byron, scored a win in the previous two races, thus earning an automatic berth in the Round of 6 that begins next weekend at Martinsville Speedway.
Hemric, driver of the No. 19 Ford for Brad Keselowski Racing, is seventh in points, 15 points outside Johnny Sauter in sixth.
Nemechek, driver of the No. 8 Nemco Motorsports Chevrolet, is eighth, tied with Hemric for points and also 15 points outside the cutoff.
“Everything here is kind of out of your hands,” Nemechek, twice a winner this season, said Friday. “Being at Talladega in the spot that we’re in … being 15 points out, I think it’s way better for me to be able to come here … where anything can happen.
“If we finish top five and someone else got caught up in somebody else’s wreck and we didn’t, we’d have a shot to make it compared to a mile-and-a-half track or short track where they can ride around all day and kind of salvage a finish where they make sure they make it.
“I haven’t quite called in any favors or anything like that. If we were able to qualify up front and run up front all day, as long as we put ourselves in a position to be top four in, where you can make a move coming to the start/finish line, I think you’ll be all right. But who knows?”
Christopher Bell, two-time series champion Matt Crafton, Ben Kennedy and Timothy Peters are second through fifth in points. All have won at least once this year, except for Peters. But he’s won here at Talladega the last two times the series visited the 2.66-mile track.
“In order to win now, we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing and not change anything at this point,” Hemric said.
“All we can do here is control what we can control, go into it approaching every situation that way, whether it’s practice, qualifying or the race. If we execute on all ends, I see no reason why we shouldn’t have a shot at it.
“At the end of the day … I think I would rather be on the end we’re on. Obviously if you’ve won, that’s even better. But the situation where we can go down swinging and not playing defense all day, I think, is going to be a good thing for (Nemechek) and I, both.”