Drew's strong run derailed by late incident
After a strong showing racing inside the top twenty for stages one and two, Jake Drew would be involved in an incident with another driver, rendering him to a 33rd place finish. This would mark Drew's sixth start of the season, fifth for Hattori Racing Enterprises.
The 2022 ARCA West champion came into the weekend with high hopes; this is one of only a few tracks Drew has raced on prior to his most recent Craftsman Truck Series start. On Thursday, Drew and the rest of the field would hit the track for a 50 minute practice session. During that session, Drew relearned Phoenix Raceway and slowly climbed up the leaderboard. Drew would time in 19th on the speed charts after posting a mock-qualifying run with only a few minutes remaining in the session.
Friday would start with qualifying as the sun was starting to set behind the grandstands at Phoenix Raceway. Drew would post a time that was good enough for 18th on the grid for the Craftsman 150. With a starting position on the outside of row eight, Drew would waste no time getting into the top-10. After the first lap, Drew had worked his way up to the ninth position. By the end of stage one, Drew would fade slightly with an ill-handling race truck at Phoenix Raceway and would cross the start-finish line in the 18th position.
After the first round of pit stops, Drew would cycle out to the 17th position to start stage two. After a few restarts, Drew would battle around the top 20 for most of stage two. He would once again fight a loose handling truck for the entirety of the segment. After a pit stop, Drew would cycle up to the top-10 to start stage three. Unfortunately a handful of laps later, Drew and a competitor would make contact, taking both out of the race with 45 laps remaining in the event. Drew would finish 33rd on the night.
Jake Drew Quote:
“First off I just want to say how much I appreciate everyone on the team for pitching in and helping out with this 61 truck. We had a great truck on the long run and we never really got a chance to show that. Practice really showed us which way the truck needed to go for the race, I left a little bit out there for qualifying but felt like if we could have been there at the end, we would have come away with a great result. It's just unfortunate that our night end the way that it did. I would have loved to have a little momentum going into 2024 but we will see where those plans end up".