NASCAR O'Reilly

Cole Whitt Makes Charlotte Debut

Charlotte Motor Speedway

Edited: May 25, 2011, 6:31 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

CORNELIUS, N.C. — Pastrana-Waltrip Racing adds another talented young driver to its lineup this weekend as Cole Whitt drives the No. 99 Red Bull Toyota in Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The 19-year-old driver races fulltime in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and is the youngest driver to ever lead the truck series point standings. In eight truck series starts, the Alpine, Calif., native has one pole, two top-five and five top-10 finishes. Two-time K&N Pro Series East champion Ryan Truex will be back behind the wheel at Chicago.

Cole Whitt, Turn One Racing Chevrolet

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

WHITT ON HIS FIRST NATIONWIDE RACE AT CHARLOTTE: “All the Pastrana-Waltrip guys have been awesome to work with, and all their equipment has been super nice. It’s nice to jump into a car like that. It just gives you some confidence going into the weekend. More than anything I am excited to see how the new Nationwide Series cars drive. I have two Nationwide starts but it was in the old car. I don’t know what to expect from the new car, but I am pretty sure Jerry Baxter (crew chief) will have the car pretty good right off the truck. It’s just a matter of me getting used to the track. Luckily, driving the truck race last week should help me a lot, and hopefully I will be able to carry that experience over to this weekend.”

ON WHAT HE LEARNED FROM THE TRUCK RACE: “More than anything, I learned you have to have a car you can race at the end. A lot of the guys were racing really hard at the start of the race, and it really didn’t get them anywhere. We kind of rode out the beginning of the race and waited for the end. This is one of the longer races for the Nationwide Series, so it’s going to be a long race. More than anything we need to get the car right for the end of the race and keep the fenders on it. The last 50 laps is really the time to let it all hang out.”

-source: pastrana-waltrip racing

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Joey Logano Heads To Charlotte

Next article Michael Annett Looking Forward To Charlotte

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Spy shots of 2027 NASCAR Ford Mustang testing at Charlotte, but what's different?

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Charlotte II

2 h

Spy shots of 2027 NASCAR Ford Mustang testing at Charlotte, but what's different?

Five key takeaways from F1's big African Grand Prix reveal in Rwanda

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1 3 h

Five key takeaways from F1's big African Grand Prix reveal in Rwanda

Niels Koolen makes switch to Abel Motorsports ahead of 2027 Indy NXT campaign

Indy NXT

IndL Indy NXT 4 h

Niels Koolen makes switch to Abel Motorsports ahead of 2027 Indy NXT campaign

GT World Challenge Portimao: All you need to know about season finale featuring Max Verstappen

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance 5 h

GT World Challenge Portimao: All you need to know about season finale featuring Max Verstappen

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts