Brett Moffitt wins Truck Series title
Brett Moffitt drove away from Grant Enfinger and Noah Gragson over the final stage to get his sixth win of 2018 and claim the Truck Series championship.
Moffitt had the fastest truck over the caution-free final half of the race and passed Gragson for the lead on lap 98. He got it back after pit stops cycled through and had no challengers in the uneventful race.
The only two cautions came for the end of the first two stages.
Moffitt’s journey towards the NASCAR title has been an unconventional one. He scored his ride for Shigeaki Hattori’s team after Ryan Truex moved over to the Xfinity Series following a 2017 season where Moffitt had run a combined 13 races across all three of NASCAR’s series. He spent seven of those 13 races driving for backmarker BK Racing in the Cup Series, where he had an average finish of 33.7.
Moffitt first became known to NASCAR fans in 2015 when Brian Vickers was sidelined from his ride at Michael Waltrip Racing because of blood clots. Moffitt finished eighth at Atlanta in his first start replacing Vickers and ended up driving in 30 more races that season when he moved over to Front Row Motorsports when the team hired David Ragan as a sub.
Michael Waltrip Racing closed at the end of the season and Ragan went back to Front Row Motorsports.
Opportunities were less than fruitful entering the 2016 season. Moffitt competed in just six Truck Series races for Red Horse Racing. He won one of those races and finished in the top 10 on four occasions. Moffitt had a ride at Red Horse for 2017, but the team ran just the first five races of the season before shutting down.
Despite its success, Hattori Racing Enterprises’ 2018 season wasn’t filled with financial glory either. As Moffitt was winning races over the summer there was a point where the team wasn’t sure if it’d be able to continue operating without sponsorship. The team soldiered on. And ended up with a title.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
