Two former champions will carry ThorSport Racing into the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chase presented by Mobil 1. Neither has been to Victory Lane in quite some time.
The Sandusky, Ohio-based organization enters Thursday’s Chase opener at Bristol Motor Speedway (8 p.m. ET, FS1, FOX One, NASCAR Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) on a 43-race winless streak, dating to Ty Majeski’s victory in November 2024 at Phoenix Raceway.
Ben Rhodes won Truck Series championships in 2021 and 2023, while Majeski captured his first title in 2024. Majeski came within a second of becoming a back-to-back champion last season, finishing behind eventual champion Corey Heim in the finale.
For Rhodes, there isn’t one obvious explanation for why ThorSport has gone winless for so long.
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“I wish I could put my finger on one solid thing and say, ‘That’s it,’ ” Rhodes said during Tuesday’s Truck Series Chase Media Day. “In certain instances, I can say execution. There’ve been some mistakes by me or even by others and then there’s been some bad luck that’s happened this year, but you can’t use that as an excuse to say that we don’t need to be searching for more speed.”
Layne Riggs leads The Chase standings entering Bristol, while Majeski resets sixth, 50 points behind. Rhodes, meanwhile, is ninth, 65 points back. Jake Garcia narrowly missed The Chase for the organization and enters Thursday’s race 12th in the standings.
Rhodes started 2026 strong with top fives in two of the first three races before tapering off, but he sees several Chase tracks that could play to the organization’s strengths.
“(This season) started out strong, and then we tapered off a bit,” Rhodes explained. “But I really think that The Chase has some good tracks for us. Bristol, Talladega, Martinsville, Homestead, all killer race tracks for us.”
Bristol and Martinsville are the two short tracks in The Chase, which also includes Kansas, Charlotte, Talladega, Phoenix and the Nov. 6 finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The three-week break before The Chase allowed ThorSport to regroup before seven races in eight weeks determine the champion. For Rhodes, the time away from the track was welcome.
“I was appreciative of the break,” Rhodes said. “We have eight weeks with seven races going forward. That’s a lot for the Truck Series schedule.”
Rhodes said the break was particularly valuable for ThorSport’s road crew members, many of whom also spend long hours at the shop preparing trucks between races.
“We used (the break) as a building session,” Rhodes said. “I can go into the race shop right now, ThorSport Racing, and I can see a fleet of trucks ready to go, so that’s a really good, comforting sign.”
Rhodes has four top-five finishes and has led 147 laps this season, fourth-most among the 10 Chase drivers. But he has just one top 10 in the last eight races. He finished second at Bristol last fall and won the track’s dirt race in 2022.
Despite entering The Chase outside the top five in points, neither Rhodes nor Majeski is approaching the opening races with an anything-goes mentality.
For Majeski, he has two poles and five top-five finishes but has led only 34 laps through the regular season. He has struggled at Bristol in recent years but won at the track in 2022, his first victory in Truck Series competition.
Majeski enters The Chase with three DNFs, the most among the 10 postseason drivers, and said avoiding mistakes early will be critical before taking more chances later in the championship hunt.
“I think for us it’s about taking maybe a little bit more careful approach to the first three and then being aggressive in those last four, all the places that are more in our wheelhouse and feel like we have a good chance to win,” Majeski said.
The DNFs, along with several other regular-season races that haven’t been clean, leave Majeski with little margin for error.
“We obviously have to clean that up,” Majeski said. “If we have one of those in the next seven races, it’s over for us, right? We don’t have the luxury of a points buffer.”
Majeski said ThorSport needs both more speed and better execution to compete for another championship.
“There’s no room for a hiccup, so we’ve got to execute on all levels,” Majeski said. “We’ve obviously got to have faster trucks than what we’ve put out on the race track and up the execution level, team-wide.”
Rhodes will make his 250th consecutive Truck Series start Thursday. He already has two championships to his name, but the milestone has done little to lessen his motivation.
“I just want to win races and championships. I’m pretty hungry right now based on this winless streak we’ve had,” Rhodes said. “To go from the highest of highs to not having a win since then has been really tough, so I’m truly focused on that right now.”