In the February NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway, Kaz Grala – then 18 years, one month and 26 days old – etched his name into the record books as the youngest driver to ever win at Daytona.
Now, the GMS Racing driver will try to advance to the Round of 6 in the series Playoffs with another superspeedway win in Saturday’s Fred’s 250 at Talladega Superspeedway (1 pm ET on FOX).
Grala now sits seventh on the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series standings, eight points behind Austin Cindric on the cutoff line. He heads into the contest riding a four-race top-five streak, including a fifth-place showing in the last event at Las Vegas. Saturday’s race marks his first career start at Talladega.
“Obviously it’s cool knowing that the last superspeedway race we were able to get the pole and the win, but anything can happen in these types of races,” Grala said. “You can have the fastest truck or be the best plate racer, but we’ve seen it time and time again in every series, that doesn’t guarantee you any sort of favorable finishing position. We’re looking at this race as a wild card, just like everyone else is.”