Boris Stated has loved a embellished profession as one among NASCAR‘s premiere highway course racers, which he plans to finish for good after the NASCAR Xfinity Collection race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on 7 October. He’ll drive the #17 Chevrolet Camaro for Hendrick Motorsports, a part-time automobile that the Cup Collection powerhouse often fields for his or her Cup regulars however will department out for Stated and Rajah Caruth, the latter getting into the season finale at Phoenix Raceway on 4 November.
Stated has raced in nearly each closed-wheel automobile with 4 wheels starting from sports activities vehicles and Supercars to rally vehicles and Stadium Tremendous Vans. This in depth repertoire made him one of many extra versatile highway racers in motorsport, which he has translated right into a NASCAR profession closely centred round such tracks spanning three many years.
He final competed on the Xfinity degree in 2021 when he raced at Circuit of the Americas for MBM Motorsports; an try at Highway America ended with him lacking the present. All however six of his twenty-nine profession begins within the sequence have come at highway programs, which included profitable at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2010.
His expertise additionally contains fifty-five Cup Collection and sixty-five Craftsman Truck Collection races, together with two full-time seasons within the latter in 1997 and 1998 with a win on the 1998 Sonoma occasion. Whereas Stated by no means gained a Cup race, he has eight prime tens and two poles, one among which was on an oval at Daytona the place he went on to complete fourth.
Now 61 years previous, Stated anticipates the Roval to be his closing NASCAR race. His final begin in any division was the Cup Collection at COTA in 2022, ending twenty-sixth for MBM.
“If I do effectively on this race, it’ll positively be my final for positive in NASCAR,” Stated advised RACER. “To finish like this in one of the best automobile I’ve ever had is fairly neat. It’s thrilling.”
Whereas Stated is the old-timer ready for a closing hurrah, Caruth is a 21-year-old upstart in his Truck Collection rookie yr. He sits seventeenth in factors with three prime tens.
In addition to his Truck obligations, he has additionally raced part-time in Xfinity for Alpha Prime Racing since 2022. In fifteen races, his greatest run is twelfth at Martinsville final yr whereas a sixteenth at Darlington is his greatest in eight 2023 begins. Caruth completed seventeenth at Phoenix in 2022.
Stated and Caruth are the primary non-Hendrick racers to pilot the #17. All 4 HMS Cup drivers—Alex Bowman, William Byron, Chase Elliott, and Kyle Larson—have every made a begin with explicit emphasis on highway programs save for Larson’s two entries at Darlington. Though it has but to win in 9 races, the automobile has been fast with three poles and 6 prime fives.
