June 25, 2017

When Trey Hutchens walked in to Iowa Speedway on Friday morning, he was expecting a not so typical day in a race car. Never being in a NASCAR Camping World Truck and never being on a radial tire called for the North Carolina State University sophomore to figuratively go to school at the race track.

“I tried to be like a sponge this weekend. I faced a lot of unknowns and I tried to manage all the variables as best as I knew how to do. I learned a lot and I wish I could take what I know now and press restart on the whole weekend.”

Hutchens recorded the 19th fastest time in both practice sessions. He then would find himself in the 18th position at the end of Round 2 in qualifying after posting the 16th fastest time in Round 1.

“I was proud of how smooth my transition was in a truck and I owe a lot of that to the Bolen Motorsports guys. I felt fairly comfortable in the truck after the practice sessions and I thought we showed good speed in qualifying. We were right with the fast guys in the first round; however, I asked for an adjustment that hurt the handling in round 2.”

During the race, the fourth-generation racer showed a lot of promise by racing inside the Top-20 for the first two stages. Unfortunately, at the end of Stage 2 Hutchens lost all communication with his team when a problem in the wiring in his helmet arose.

“It’s heartbreaking. You do everything right and sometimes that still isn’t enough. I’m not sure what we’ve got to do to change our luck. We fought hard all night and we were going to be back on the lead lap to start the final stage but I didn’t get the message because I couldn’t hear my team. NASCAR had no other choice than to park us until I could hear and we lost 6 laps changing helmets. I really hate it for PhoneSkope, I was extremely excited to have them on our Silverado this weekend and we were on our way to providing them a solid finish. The cars we were racing around finished around the Top-12, that would’ve made for an awesome debut.”

Despite issues, Hutchens finished the Iowa 200 in the 16th position. The Trey Hutchens Racing team plans to be back in action at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July 15th in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East.