Ty Majeski begins the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season proudly displaying a new patch on his ThorSport Racing firesuit — “Champion.” The driver from Wisconsin secured the series’ top honor in 2024, following footsteps of his teammate, Ben Rhodes, who achieved the title the previous season.
“ThorSport’s coming off of, you know, two consecutive championships now,” Majeski said in an interview with NASCAR.com. “Which is pretty special. It’s hard to get one and really hard to go back to back. And so we’re pretty proud of that. You know, our race team out of Ohio is a little bit of an anomaly to NASCAR, being outside of the Charlotte area. So we’re pretty proud to do that.
“Just very thankful to have the opportunity to race for them and have a great group around me with my No. 98 guys, and yeah, just give us more drive to want to repeat. You know, we had a really good season last year.”
MORE: Craftsman Truck Series schedule | Truck entry list for Martinsville
That championship “drive” for back-to-back titles is something that can be seen throughout the opening four races of this year’s Truck campaign.
With just one finish outside of the top 10 — 11th-place result at Homestead-Miami Speedway — and several upcoming race tracks that align well with Majeski’s short-track experience, it is almost reasonable to assume the race team based in Sandusky, Ohio, could be on the verge of a win.
“Looking at the schedule, this is a really good area in the schedule for us,” Majeski continued in the interview. “Martinsville, Bristol, then we go to Rockingham and then, I think, to Texas, Kansas, North Wilkesboro, Charlotte. So all tracks that that we’ve ran well at with the No. 98 team.
“This is kind of the heart of the season here. So this is where we need to keep some trucks together because the schedule gets incredibly brutal. Truck teams don’t have the infrastructures to just go and, you know, wreck trucks every week and be able to get them turned back around. So we need to be smart and take calculated risks these next few weeks. Try and keep trucks intact so we can just fluff on them instead of trying to rebuild them just to get to the next race.”
Calculated risks are something to keep in the front of mind in this stretch of racing, not only the wildcard nature that presents itself at Martinsville and Bristol but the spotlight that is cast onto these tracks in the postseason.
Valuable data to be mined in the coming weeks as teams with eyes set on championship glory start to prepare for when the series returns to Bristol on Sept. 11 for the second Round of 10 race and Martinsville on Oct. 24 for the Round of 8 finale.
“It’s a big deal, Majeski said. “We’ve been working on sim incredibly hard to try and get everything as realistic as we can possibly make it because we know this is our one shot to maybe experiment.
“We’re using this weekend to step outside of our comfort zone a little bit and come up with something a little bit different to try to be a little bit better for the for the fall race. So yeah, a little bit of an R&D type weekend. I mean, we’re confident it’s going to be good, but, like I said, stepping outside of our comfort zone in hopes of being better for the playoffs, that obviously is the is the cutoff race. Hopefully, we’re locked in by then. But if we’re not, we want to make sure we’re prepared.”
Not only are the next few events crucial in the success later down the road, the Truck Series has some new additions that bring a refreshed challenge for competitors. With the return to Rockingham on the horizon slated for April 18, the series also welcomes Lime Rock Park (June 28) and the familiar Charlotte Roval (Oct. 3) to the schedule.
Challenges the defending series champion approaches with a positive outlook.
“I like road-course racing. It’s fun, Majeski said. “It’s a change of pace, something a little bit different. Yeah, there’s a lot of short-tracks on the schedule, you know, with Wilkesboro being added, you know, a couple of years ago. You know, New Hampshire is back. So there’s really the a lot of the races that we go to are probably considered short-tracks, which is, you know, obviously at my wheelhouse. So I think the schedule is headed a great direction.
“Glad to see it expand a little bit and go to some different areas, some different areas of the country. I’ve never been to New Hampshire and Lime Rock. I’ve never even been up to the northeast yet. So happy to get up there a couple of times this year. And, yeah, step outside of our comfort zone a little bit.”
Ty Majeski will continue his quest to notch his first win of 2025 as he joins the other Truck Series competitors at Martinsville Speedway on Friday night (7:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio).