ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Four days removed from the most thrilling 12th-place finish of his career, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series rookie Robby Lyons still had few words to describe his series debut at Phoenix Raceway.
“I’m having a really hard time trying to absorb all of it,” Lyons told Race Chaser Online this week as he worked to process a wealth of congratulations and advice. “It doesn’t even seem like it happened. It’s so crazy.”
And in the wake of a media and industry blitz, following a near top-10 in a race that the 28-year-old simply wanted to complete all the laps of, can you really blame him for being overwhelmed?
Last Friday’s Lucas Oil 150 was like something out of a dream for Lyons, who just a few years ago was racing late models at local Florida short tracks hoping to find the right opportunity to break onto the national stage.
That chance came in the form of a shot to drive for Jay Robinson’s Premium Motorsports in the No. 49 Sunwest Construction Chevrolet, and Lyons set the bar at “completing all the laps and keeping the fenders on it.”
He did a lot more than that in the end, but it was an eventful road to get there, despite the truck having decent speed from the moment it came off the trailer.
“I can’t say I doubted myself, but every time I’d come in and the team would read off lap times to me, I never looked at the screen to see what everyone else was running. I was just out there running my own laps, you know?”
“When I got back into my hauler and picked up my phone, and everyone was saying, ‘Dude you’re 20th in practice!’ I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, the (truck) has more in it!’”
All things told, Lyons said he even shocked himself with making the second round of qualifying for the Phoenix race — only running one lap in the opening round to do so, no less.
“When I went out to qualify, I killed the battery on accident,” Lyons said. “One of the guys had turned my helmet fan on while we were waiting for the first round to start, and when we rolled down to the end of pit road we shut it down and were just waiting for a spot. The problem was, I forgot to turn my blower off and it killed the battery.”
“Thankfully, NASCAR let the guys push the truck back and we push-started it. I only got to run one lap and it ended up getting me into the second round.”
From there, Lyons said it was about running his race, and that’s exactly what he did.
He stayed out of trouble and, despite falling two laps down right at the end of the first stage and running out of fuel moments before the end of the second stage, was in position to capitalize on the three late-race crashes that decimated the middle of the field.
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