Truckwacking is the new Buschwacking

While both the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series saw drivers competing full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series win both races at Bristol this past weekend, a new trend is becoming more clear. Truckwacking is the new Buschwacking.

Friday night’s Tennessee Army National Guard 250 saw a record high seven Cup drivers in the field. These being race winner Christopher Bell, Ross Chastain, Kyle Busch, Carson Hocevar, Chase Briscoe, Daniel Suarez, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Saturday’s Suburban Propane 300 saw only two Cup drivers in comparison, race winner Connor Zilisch and Kyle Larson who led the most laps.

Looking at this O’Reilly race weekend 10 years ago, there were eight Cup regulars in the field. But for the fall truck race at this track in Bristol, there were none, but two regulars from the O’Reilly series instead.

The precedent has seemingly flipped and when looking at the limits drivers can run in the O’Reilly this year being 10, only one driver with over three years of experience at the Cup level is expected to hit that limit being Chastain. In the Truck Series however, there are two that will hit that limit being Chastain and Busch.

Drivers who also have not made starts in years have also returned to the series and some Cup drivers who completely skipped the series in their driver development have gone down to make their debut in recent years. Stenhouse competed in the series for the first time at Daytona this year finishing sixth, and AJ Allmendinger and Suarez have both made their first starts in five years.

Last year Michael McDowell made his first start in 16 years, and Chris Buescher made his first ever start in the series after skipping to O’Reilly. As a result, the only full-time Cup series driver to not attempt a truck race is Ty Gibbs. With all of these factors, what’s causing the trend?

The most common reason given is over the driving style of the trucks being more similar to the next gen cars compared to the O’Reilly cars. There’s more grip and downforce in the trucks making them race more similarly. But there are some other factors to also consider.

The amount of full-time drivers running in the O’Reilly series has heavily increased which makes it much harder to find seats for a few races. Currently, there are 28 full-time drivers in the O’Reilly series and there’s 38 spots available every week. However, in the Truck series there’s only 21 full-time drivers for 36 spots every week which allows for more availability for part time drivers to run in a rotation truck.

There are also more teams receiving high factory support with rotation trucks this year as well, both part time and full time. Such include from Niece Motorsports, Spire Motorsports, Tricon Garage, Halmar Friesen Racing, and Kaulig Racing.

With the return of The Chase, some teams also will try to take advantage of the Owner Points Chase by having cup drivers more frequently leading up. They can’t run any Chase races, but they can break them into a chance for an owners championship.

While only two drivers in the series are expected to hit the limit of eight races with more than three years of cup experience, it still seems like a new era of truckwacking has kicked in.

We may never get as much as half of the field running in the series like about 20 years ago in O’Reilly, we may still get decently high amounts of Cup regulars in Truck races.