Homestead-Miami Speedway Baptist Health 200 Race Preview
Grant Enfinger, No. 23 Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet Silverado RST
Homestead-Miami Speedway Stats
– NCTS Starts: 6; Poles: 1 (2018); Best finish: 2nd (2018); Top 5s: 1; Top 10s: 3; Laps led: 33
2023 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Season Stats
– Starts: 21; Wins: 3 (Kansas I, WWT Raceway, Milwaukee); Poles: 1 (Milwaukee); Stage wins: 3; Top-5s: 8; Top-10s: 11; Laps led: 232; Current points position: 5th (-3 to the cutline)
– About Champion Power Equipment: Since 2003, Champion Power Equipment has earned a reputation for designing and producing the market’s finest power equipment. From our original headquarters in Santa Fe Springs, California, Champion has expanded its North American footprint to include facilities in Jackson, Tennessee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Toronto Canada. Today, Champion’s product line has expanded to include portable generators, home standby generators, inverter generators, engines, winches and log splitters. With over 2.5 million generators sold in North America, Champion is a market leader in the power equipment field. Visit ChampionPowerEquipment.com for more information.
– Chassis History/Info: Enfinger and the No. 23 team will compete with GMS Racing chassis no. 346 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. This Silverado RST debuted at the beginning of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and has finished inside the top-10 in four of the five races that it has been raced. Enfinger took this truck to victory lane at Kansas Speedway for his first win of the year back in May.
– Talladega Recap: Talladega was undeniably a difficult race for Enfinger and the Champion Power Equipment team. Grant was involved in numerous accidents on the day, wounding his No. 23 Silverado. The team fought feverishly to keep Enfinger in the race, and he was able to nurse it to the finish with a 13th-place result. With no stage points, this places the veteran fifth in the championship standings heading into Homestead-Miami Speedway.
– Hensley at Homestead-Miami: Jeff Hensley has competed in a total of 18 CRAFTSMAN Truck Series races at Homestead-Miami Speedway since 2004. Though he has not yet visited victory lane at the 1.5-mile track, his trucks have won two poles with Mike Skinner in 2006 and Grant Enfinger in 2018. He’s finished in the top-10 on eight occasions, including two runner-up results with Brian Scott in 2008 and with Enfinger in 2018, accounting for 87 total laps led. Hensley has also called four NASCAR Xfinity Series races from atop the box at Homestead, earning one top-10 finish at the first race ever held back in 1995.
– GMS at Homestead: GMS Racing is still looking for its first win at Homestead-Miami, but the team’s drivers have had plenty of successful runs in the past. The team has seven top-fives and ten top-10 results in Miami, including a runner-up finish delivered by Tyler Ankrum in 2020. John Hunter Nemechek also finished sixth for GMS in the Xfinity Series race in 2019. The team has led for 83 laps in Truck Series competition, including a dominant showing with Kyle Larson back in 2016. Johnny Sauter was crowned the series champion in that race after posting a third-place finish, securing the first NCTS title for Team Owner, Maury Gallagher.
– #FearTheFinger Playoffs Profile: Entering the penultimate race of the season, Enfinger finds himself a mere three points below the playoffs cutline behind Nick Sanchez. He will look to punch his ticket to his second Championship 4 appearance on Saturday, with highlights of the year including three race wins at Kansas Speedway, WWT Raceway, and the Milwaukee Mile, where he most recently walked away victorious from the pole position.
– Got a Copy?: Grant Enfinger will serve as this weekend’s “In-Race Reporter” for the FOX Sports 1 race broadcast, and will take viewers around the Homestead-Miami Speedway with several on-board camera angles from his Champion Power Equipment Chevy.
– From The Drivers Seat: Homestead-Miami is one of the more unique intermediate tracks on the schedule, so what is the key to making speed here?
“I feel like everything at Homestead revolves around tire management. You have to have a vehicle that can still be aggressive though. All of our truck races, you have to push it hard on restarts, but the harder you push it early on in a run, the more you’re going to pay the price at the end of the run. It’s still a place where you’ve got to have track position, but there are multiple grooves there. There’s guys that have had a lot of success running up against the wall, but there’s also guys that have been able to win the race by just wrapping the bottom. But normally, the truck that’s able to win the race is one that can move around a little bit.”
Simple question. What will it take to move onto Phoenix this weekend?
“For our team in the situation that we’re in, I think we have to be a little bit more on the aggressive side. A little more aggressive than smart. I think we’ve got four of us within 12 or so points there. It’s going to be critical that we all get some stage points, and hopefully we can put ourselves in a position to win. We’re racing the same truck that we won Kansas with earlier this year, and Jeff and I like Homestead. I feel like it’s been good to us in the past. We’ve never won there; but we’ve had good trucks in the past. We had a good truck there last year, maybe not one that could contend for the win with, but definitely a solid truck nonetheless. We’re going to try to build off of last year and make it even better this year.”
– From The Pit Box (Jeff Hensley): Three points is the gap heading into this weekend. How confident are you in your team to find these three points and advance to the Championship 4?
“Homestead has always been a pretty decent track for myself and Grant as a pair, so I feel like if we were going anywhere else, we might be a little bit nervous. But I feel like if we go down there and run in the top-five like we’ve done in the past; we’ve even won a stage or two there in the past; if we could go down and do that then we can control what we do. I’d rather be in the situation that we’re in now with only being three points out compared to last year going there 30 points out because of the crash in Talladega. You know, I feel good about it. If we were going to Phoenix trying to advance to Homestead, I might not be quite as confident because Phoenix has been a bit of a struggle for us.
Homestead in the past has always been a race that we could have won, maybe should have won, but have never won. But, we’ve always managed to come out of there with a good finish if we didn’t have any issues. I think we go do the best we can. You can’t control what everyone else does but we can certainly control what we do. We’ve just got to stick to our game plan and run our race and at the end of the day, we’ll count the points and see where we land, but Homestead has always been one of our better tracks.”
Race Information
– Round: NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race no. 22 of 23 (Playoffs Round of 8)
– Track Location: Homestead-Miami Speedway – Homestead, Florida
– Race Name: Baptist Health 200
– Broadcast: Saturday, October 21st at 12:00 PM ET live on FS1 (TV), MRN (Radio), and Sirius XM NASCAR Channel 90
