By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
It was an up-and-down yet quiet day for Brett Moffitt and the No. 16 Hattori Racing Enterprises team at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, but they were able to survive to finish third.
Moffitt qualified 17th for the Chevrolet Silverado 250 because NASCAR deemed the track as “wet” for qualifying on Saturday evening.
Going into the race, the goal for the team was to just gather stage points. The No. 16 team came into the race seeded second in the Playoff grid, just 18 points above the cut-off line.
In the first stage, Moffitt gathered five stage points, while gathering nine points in the second stage.
“We wanted to get stage points because those can really help out if it comes down to not making the next round, so with our position going into this being second in points, stage points were our mission, Moffitt said post-race.
After being stuck in traffic for most of the race, Moffitt believed that he had a truck fast enough to possibly win the race and advance to the next round of the playoffs. However, slight contact in the first stage put the team behind and the last restart put the team behind.
“We knew we had a fast enough Tundra to get back to the front at the end. Had a little bit of contact early in the last stage, which put us back a few positions,” Moffitt continued.
“I really had to use the truck and the tires to get back into a top-five there for that last restart and just didn’t quite have enough to hang with them and clear the 8 (John Hunter Nemechek) there, but all in all it was a really good day.”
As the series has a couple of weeks of before their next event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Moffitt knows what he will need for the event
“Vegas is one of the tracks that I think everyone thought we need to be aggressive at and that’s our best chance to win since it’s our second time going there this season and everyone had pretty fast trucks there at the beginning of the year. We’ll go there and we’re taking the same truck that we ran second or so with in the spring and we’ll go for a win there,” he said.
After Canada, he finds himself 29 points above the cut-off line.