By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
With Matt Crafton running the Ilmor NT1 engine throughout 2018, David Pepper, general manager and spotter at ThorSport Racing, explained the decision by ThorSport to use an OEM engine for the No. 88 Ford F-150 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
In 2018, NASCAR allowed for Camping World Truck teams to run either an Ilmor NT1 spec engine or run their respective OEM’s engine. At the beginning of the year, ThorSport Racing opted to run the Ilmor NT1 package.
With the Playoffs underway, Pepper explained the organization’s decision to use a Roush-Yates Engine on the No. 88 truck.
“We are just experimenting. We have to try anything. We made a decision to make that change here and see what it did. You do not want to put all your eggs in one basket coming to a race like this and have a problem. We felt better if we spread that across the teams. We feel like both packages are good. We wanted to see what it would do. Obviously, it ran really well tonight; all of our trucks ran well,” Pepper stated after the World of Westgate 200.
When the Ford F-150’s rolled off the truck, Pepper stated that they all had the same setup with different changes to fit the driving style of their stable.
Going forward, ThorSport Racing is going to evaluate every race remaining to see what they need to do to have their trucks in contention for a race win every week.