Jordan Anderson Looks To Carry Momentum To Atlanta Following Top-10 At Daytona

by February 21, 2018 0 comments

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – With a dully, a late model trailer, a few team members and a race truck, Jordan Anderson finished ninth in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway.

After starting 28th, Forest Acres, South Carolina’s Jordan Anderson finished inside the top-10 after he survived an array of crashes throughout the 100-lap race on Friday night. Anderson led one lap throughout the race, and during his 58th NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start, he achieved one of three goals that he had set for the team during the 2018 season. Heading into the year, Anderson wanted to run the whole racing season, finish higher than 17th in the championship standings, and he wanted to capture his first-career top-10 finish, which he did on Friday night.

“It was pretty crazy how the race fell into our hands, because that was our strategy going into it was to lay back those first two stages and try to put ourselves into position to be up front towards the end,” Anderson said. “The biggest thing about Daytona and Talladega, nine times out of ten, it’s a race of survival. You’ve got to be there and survive the crashes.”

As the field rounded the final corners of the high-banked superspeedway, Anderson was within the top-five. When the field entered the tri-oval and headed towards the finish line, Anderson spun after contact was made with Scott Lagasse Jr. Anderson did everything that he could to keep his No. 3 Jacob Companies/Bommarito.com Toyota out of the outside wall on the frontstretch. Luckily for Anderson, contact with the outside wall was averted, and he finished a solid ninth-place at the World Center of Racing.

“We started that third stage and there were a few cautions, and I think we found ourselves with 17 (laps) to go, and we were right outside of the top-ten,” Anderson said. “’I said, I think that we got a shot at this, let’s see what we can do’, and it got down to 20 (laps) to go, and we turned our race which now became to race. We were going to see what we had, and I started racing, working the bottom line and started picking them off one-by-one. I think we were riding fifth there with four or five laps to go. I was going to try and ride the bottom and see what happens, and they split up three-wide there coming through (Turns) 3 and 4 in the finals corners.

“I figured the bottom was the safest place to be, so you could get a hole that might open. It was looking like we were going to get a fourth-place finish once the smoke cleared. Right there coming to the tri-oval, the 20 truck (Scott Lagasse Jr.) got into our right rear and turned me up towards the track. I was doing all I could to get away from the wall. I throttled up and turned it back towards the infield. That was a blessing to be able to keep it out of the wall.”

Photo Credit: Jordan Anderson PR | Jordan Anderson unloads in Daytona with a Late Model trailer.

Anderson and his team have always done more with less. In fact, his entire team could fit inside the dully on Friday night in Daytona. When Anderson rolls up to the racetrack, he doesn’t unload his race truck from a several hundred thousand-dollar hauler, he rolls his race truck out of a trailer that you’d see at a local Late Model race. This season, the Ilmor motor, along with the draft allowed Anderson’s small team to compete with GMS Racing, ThorSport Racing and others during the season opener. Anderson was competing in a truck that Austin Wayne Self finished runner-up with during last year’s season opener at Daytona International Speedway.

“That has always been our thing is doing more with less, and making the most of our resources,” Anderson said. “We’ve been very fortunate to be surrounded by some really good people that have helped us get to our point, and there are a lot of people that have sacrificed to help us get here. This trailer that we brought this truck down here with, we bought it back in 2009 and raced two years of dirt late models with it, two years of asphalt super late models in the PASS (Pro All Stars Series) with it. We ran some K&N races, and we have been racing the Truck Series with it since back in 2015.”

Although Anderson relies heavily on friends and partners, he is ready to take on the high banks of Atlanta Motor Speedway. In Daytona, Anderson had a friend help him purchase hotel rooms and another friend helped by buying waters, Gatorades and food. All of those minor expenses add up over the course of a season, but in his fifth year competing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Anderson has always found a way to make everything work out, whether it’s borrowing crew members or finding unique ways to make ends meet. At the end of the weekend, Anderson hopes to leave Atlanta unscathed so that he can compete at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the same truck that was purchased from Niece Motorsports. Between Las Vegas and Martinsville Speedway, there is a break in the schedule, and that’s where Anderson hopes to finally get ahead of the game and have several trucks on standby for competition.

“We realize that going to Atlanta is a completely different race,” Anderson said. “It’s a completely different style of racing. We’ve got a different truck that we’re taking next week, so the biggest thing for us these next two week, Atlanta and (Las) Vegas is going to be a lot similar to what Daytona was in finding that balance between being aggressive, but at the same time, being conservative enough to take care of our equipment and make sure that we’re there at the end. That’s the biggest thing for us is even though we do have some more trucks, we’ve got four trucks, we’ve only got one right now that’s together to go race intermediate tracks. We’ve got to still make sure that we take care of our equipment in Atlanta to make sure that we can get to Las Vegas.”

The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Active Pest Control 200 benefitting Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will broadcast live on FOX Sports 1 (FS1) and the Motor Racing Network (MRN) at 4:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, February 24.

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