GMS Racing‘s ARCA Menards Series driver Jack Wood will move up to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series stable for two races. On Thursday, the team announced Wood will make his Truck début at Circuit of the Americas on 22 May in the #24 Chevrolet Silverado before returning the following week at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Wood joined GMS and Drivers Edge Development, a junior driver programme run by GMS and Chevrolet, for the 2021 season. Over the previous two years, he raced in the ARCA Menards Series West and the national ARCA series for his family-owned Velocity Motorsports.
After the first four ARCA races, he is sixth in points with two top-ten finishes and most recently notched his first top five when he finished fourth at Kansas. In fifteen career ARCA West races (one of which was a combination event with the national series), he has six top tens with a best finish of fifth at Colorado National Speedway in 2020.
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to get in a top-tier truck, especially at a race track like COTA,” Wood stated. “It’s going to be a long day of learning for me, but I’m excited for the challenge. I can’t thank everybody at Chevrolet and GMS enough for giving me a shot.”
The COTA race will mark his first time competing on a road course at a national level. The 20-year-old’s lone regional road race came in the West Series in 2019 when he finished sixteenth at Sonoma Raceway.
“Jack is a talented young man with a bright future ahead of him,” said GMS president Mike Beam. “To be able to see members of the Drivers Edge Development programme progress and compete at various levels of the sport is rewarding and we’re excited to see what he can do in his first two Truck starts.”
Wood is one of a number of drivers who will make their NASCAR débuts at COTA, a new addition to the sanctioning body’s schedules, though many of his fellow newcomers hail from road racing backgrounds. Examples include Trans-Am champion Cameron Lawrence and SCCA racer Brad Gross.
GMS’s #24 has become the team’s multi-driver truck since Raphaël Lessard departed the organisation in early May due to sponsorship troubles. Ryan Reed ran the #24’s first race since at Darlington, where he finished twelfth.
