Rajah Caruth becomes 3rd Black driver to win a NASCAR national series race

LAS VEGAS — Rajah Caruth was a kid growing up in Washington, D.C., who learned his racing craft not on the race track but while competing online.

After beginning to race in an actual car just five years ago, Caruth earned his biggest victory Friday night as he became the third Black driver in NASCAR history to win a national series race. He captured the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The 21-year-old Spire Motorsports driver — who is a senior at Winston-Salem State University — had just one top-five finish in his first 29 career starts in the series and no top-10s in 19 starts in NASCAR's top "minor" league, the Xfinity Series.

But he has shown steady improvement in his last dozen races, won the pole for the race Friday night and led 38 laps, including the final 21 of the 134-lap event.

"It was a lot of days, especially in high school that I did not think I could get here," Caruth said. "I can't tell you how many times .... [I was] just working on my website when I was just iRacing, and a lot of those days, I didn't think this would be at all possible."

Caruth drove for GMS Racing last year, his first full season in a NASCAR national series as he finished 16th in the truck standings. GMS closed following last season, leaving Caruth looking for a ride, and he finally landed at Spire, which bought the Kyle Busch Motorsports truck program during the offseason. 

He finished third in the season opener at Daytona and then eighth last week at Atlanta, building momentum into Friday's event.

The significance of the victory wasn't lost on Caruth, who joins the list of Black drivers having won in NASCAR that consists of Wendell Scott (who won a Cup race at Jacksonville in 1964) and Bubba Wallace (who earned his first of six truck victories in 2013 and has two Cup victories with one in 2021 and one in 2022).

Caruth is a product of NASCAR's diversity program, which is funded in part by NASCAR through Rev Racing (owned by U.S. Track and Field CEO Max Siegel). NASCAR runs combines to select drivers from diverse backgrounds that Rev fields in a variety of racing levels that are stepping stones to NASCAR.

"Shout out to Max Siegel and NASCAR for believing in me from the jump because I don't think a lot of people did," Caruth said. "But hopefully they'll start now."

A key to Caruth's victory was avoiding mistakes that foiled other contenders. Ty Majeski, who led a race-high 40 laps, was hit with a speeding penalty on pit road during the final pit stops.

"Those Spire trucks are phenomenal, and Rajah is very talented and he also has a great crew chief [in Chad Walter] behind him" said Tyler Ankrum, who finished second to Caruth.

"When you have that support base and you have the same crew chief for more than a year, you're going to be a force to be reckoned with."

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.