ARCA champ Lofton struggling in rookie truck season
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By Jared Turner
Special to the Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
So splendid were the fortunes of Justin Lofton last year in the ARCA Racing Series that he doesn’t remember hardly anything going wrong.
Now a rookie in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Lofton, can’t get much of anything to go right.
Lofton, 24, a winner of six ARCA races en route to the 2009 title, is downright sick of losing in the truck series. He is 14th in points with one top 10 (a third at Dover) in 12 starts.
“It honestly has been tough, not only for me but for my crew chief and car chief and a couple other guys that I brought along with me over to Red Horse from Eddie Sharp’s (ARCA team),” Lofton said. “We were all used to almost nothing could go wrong. I think we really had one mechanical issue last year … and other than that, it was pretty much a picture-perfect season and just something that it became really comfortable and a lot of fun.
“And this year it was in a way very humbling, not that we really got in over our head or thought we were better than anyone else or anything like that. It was just (that) we kind of set our standard for ourselves, and I guess we’ve kind of been knocked from that down and kind of been shown what racing can do to you.”
Saturday’s inaugural Pocono Mountains 125 at Pocono Raceway may be a good opportunity for Lofton to turn the tide. He won one ARCA race at Pocono last year and finished second in the other. He has four starts there, making Pocono one of the few tracks in the truck series where he has as much or more experience than the majority of his competition.
“Track time—seat time—is the single most important thing in racing, and I definitely think I have an advantage over, I’d say, 75 percent of the field,” Lofton said of Pocono. “I know there’s a couple guys—(Todd) Bodine, (Mike) Skinner, (Kasey) Kahne and (Denny) Hamlin—that have a lot of track time there, but other than that, I think I might be one step ahead of it, especially having a crew chief (Mark Rette) that I raced with last year and we won together there last year.
“I think we know weather patterns, we kind of know what to expect right off the bat. If practice gets fogged out, rained out, we’re pretty confident in what we’re taking as far as the setup and what to expect during the race than I think a lot of other people are being prepared for.”
Bodine, the series points leader, is a big fan of Lofton. Bodine says many of Lofton’s problems haven’t been of his own making—such as last weekend at O’Reilly Raceway Park when a mechanical issue in the final 50 laps derailed a likely top-10 finish.
“They’ve been very competitive,” Bodine said of Lofton and the Red Horse team. “Unfortunately, they’ve had a lot of bad luck; some of it their own doing, some of it other people’s doing, getting caught up in things. I think Justin is a very capable racecar driver.
“I think for any sponsor, he’s a very good marketing tool. He’s a very good-looking boy, very well-spoken, knows how to handle himself. He’s got everything it takes.”
Lofton believes that, too. That’s why, at least publically, he’s not fearful he could lose his ride if matters don’t quickly improve.
“You really can’t put a lot of blame on me or my crew for some of these things that we’ve had happen to us. We really don’t have any of that ‘if I don’t perform, I’m out,’ ” Lofton said. “They have a tremendous amount of confidence in me, and I have a tremendous amount of confidence in them. And as long as we stay together and we keep working as a team, then we’ll come out of this and we’ll come out of this looking really, really good.”
Fast facts
What: Pocono Mountains 125
Where: Pocono Raceway; Long Pond, Pa.
When: Saturday, 1 p.m. ET
TV: Speed, 12:30 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN/SIRIUS Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: 2.5-mile triangle
Race distance: 50 laps/125 miles
Qualifying: Saturday, 10 a.m. ET
2009 winner: Inaugural race
Points leaders: 1. Todd Bodine, 1,861; 2. Aric Almirola, 1,684; 3. Johnny Sauter, 1,679; 4. Ron Hornaday Jr., 1,649; 5. Timothy Peters, 1,649; 6. Austin Dillon, 1,584; 7. Matt Crafton, 1,583; 8. Mike Skinner, 1,574; 9. David Starr, 1,528; 10. Jason White, 1,493.
