The Weirdest NASCAR Truck Series Season Nobody Talks About

NASCAR during the early 2010s was a desert for young talent. With all-time bad Cup Series ROTYs like Stephen Leicht, Andy Lally, and Kevin Conway. Due to bushwhacking and teams being comfy with their veterans, leading them not to want to develop talent. Doesn’t mean there was no talent.

A Window Into A World That Never Was

Looking at the standings and many of the winners shows a plethora of young talents who never lived up to their full potential. Starting with the very first winner of the year, John King. Now, King wasn’t a young talent wasted but a guy who was lucky to be there at all.

Before 2012, the man from Kingsport, Tennessee, made only seven starts in the NASCAR Truck Series for three different owners, with his best finish on debut. So, a lot of people were shocked when a top-tier team, Red Horse, signed him for 2012.

And he would really shock people when, in his first ever race at a superspeedway, he would win his first ever NASCAR race after he accidentally hooked Sauter to set up a final restart where Joey Coulter, going flying into the catchfence, would end things under yellow.

King would go from leading the NASCAR Truck Series standings for two weeks to being fired midseason for underperformance and a lack of sponsorship. He never went full-time, instead picking up PT rides. Many at Daytona, where he never could recapture that magic he had in 2012.

Then There Was Justin Lofton, Cale Gale, and Eddie Sharp Racing

A what-if driver and a what-if team for the price of one. Lofton was the 2009 ARCA champion, holding off another 2012 NASCAR truck winner and what-if driver Kligerman, who won nine races that ARCA season.But entering 2012, while Lofton had shown flashes of speed in NASCAR, he’d still been fired by top truck teams like Red Horse and Germain before being picked up by Eddie Sharp Racing.

2012 looked to be a massive year for the team after being outbid by KHI, another top truck team. And it looked like they’d be a top NASCAR truck when Lofton won at Charlotte on pure speed, beating Cup driver Keselowski.Then, in the finale with the ESR No.33, Cale Gale, an RCR development driver, also beat Keselowski in a memorable photo finish.

But all these promises would go unfilled. ESR, due to the expansion to four trucks, would shut down after 2013 due to financial constraints. And neither Lofton nor Gale would go full-time in any NASCAR series again. Both are remembered as busts.

Now for Nelson Piquet Jr.

Piquet Jr. will not be remembered most for anything he did in NASCAR but for the “crashgate” scandal in F1 where Renault told the Brazilian to crash on purpose to give teammate Alonso a strategic advantage, which led to him winning that GP.

His NASCAR career is underrated, though, as his 2012 season showed. After he was rejected by F1 and left amid a scandal, he crossed that massive pond and went into NASCAR. In his second full-time truck, he improved from his tenth-place points finish to seventh, winning two races.

At Michigan and Las Vegas, two oval trucks. Making him one of the few drivers who started racing out in road course-based series to come over to NASCAR and win at any oval. Something not like what Montoya, Ambrose, or currently SVG has done.

He even won at Road America in the Nationwide Series in 2012, his only Nationwide Series win. In 2013, he went full-time in the NASCAR Nationwide Series with his NASCAR Truck Series team, Turner Scott. He didn’t win in 2013, and not only would he never be full-time in NASCAR again, but he would do only one Cup Series start in 2014.

Bonus Round: The 2012 Truck Series Champion: James Buescher

But the weirdest thing to look back on is, of course, that year’s champion. James Buescher also won the opening NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Daytona that year. And went on to compete in four NASCAR Truck Series races in 2012, winning the championship.

He returned to the NASCAR Truck Series in 2013 and finished third in the points standings after winning two races. But after his full-time season in the NASCAR Nationwide Series in 2014 with RAB, his career would dissipate, and today he’s made a career for himself in real estate.

A lack of funding, plus his truck and nationwide series team, Turner Scott, peaking at this time, before overambition and internal politics kill the team from within. It meant that James’s garage connections were useless, and nobody wanted to give the young talent a chance without sponsorship backing.

Final Thoughts

Something that’s even more awkward to remember when seeing his cousin Chris Buescher winning in the Cup Series. As he’s an Xfinity and ARCA Series champion with a top ride, he’s shown he’s a top-ten or better driver in the top division of NASCAR. Emphasizing how much untapped potential we can see from this one truck series season alone, thanks a bunch for reading!