Rajah Caruth came into Friday’s, May 29, Truck Series race at Nashville Motor Speedway with confidence and a clear mission. He wanted to secure another win for the Busch family. For most of the night, he looked firmly in control, but the closing moments delivered a harsh twist that changed everything.

"Obviously, I wanted to get that for the Busch family, but, second’s not bad, and yeah, good notes probably for these guys, and I had a lot of fun coming back into the truck series tonight," he shared during the post-race interview.

At the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, Caruth started the race in 29th after rain had cancelled the qualifying. He made his way up to second. The race winner, Layne Riggs, and Caruth had a very close battle with each other as Riggs overtook the lead coming out of turn 2 and drove to victory. 

Caruth dominated the closing stage, leading 44 of the final 46 laps and taking the white flag in front. But the decisive lap slipped away as Riggs powered to his outside entering Turn 1, cleared him off Turn 2, and charged down the backstretch to win by just 0.468 seconds.

Busch had a special reason for planning to dedicate the victory to the Busch family.

Caruth stepped into the No 7 truck, which was all set to be driven by Busch before his sudden passing on May 21st. Busch was scheduled to compete in eight races in the Truck Series in 2026. During the race at Charlotte, it was Corey Day who took over the No 7 truck for Busch. 

Rajah Caruth Opens Up About the Use of Resin in Nashville

NASCAR’s experiment with resin continues this week as well. During the race at Dover, the organization announced that they were going to splatter resin on all four corners of the track. 

This week saw resin added to the concrete to control tire wear, something Caruth responded positively to, and mentioned it has been used at tracks like Dover, Charlotte, and a few others.

“It holds in the rubber well and gives us options, especially when they do the whole track," Caruth said. "When they do it in like half a track, it kind of gets overly dominating in that lane. But here, when it's on the whole race track, I feel it's pretty solid.”

Chandler Smith secured third place, with Ross Chastain finishing fourth and Tyler Ankrum fifth.

Share your thoughts on Caruth missing out on a chance to win in Busch's honor.

Read more at RFK Racing Digest.

Written by

Chionia Libania Colaco

Edited by

Soheli Tarafdar