The Truck Series Has One Major Change in 2025

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What’s Happening?

In 2025, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will see many changes, with key drivers moving up and down the NASCAR developmental level. However, for the first time since 2011, the trucks will face a 25-race schedule. Here’s what you need to know.

Back to Normal

During the early days of the Craftsman Truck Series, from 1995 to 2002, the number of races on the schedule fluctuated. At the most, the series hosted 27 races in 1998, with a low of 20 races during its debut season in 1995.

From 2003 to 2011, the series found a happy medium at 25 races. This golden period of the truck series had drivers like Austin Dillon, Todd Bodine, and Ron Hornaday battling for the championship. The schedule included tracks like Indianapolis Raceway Park, Memphis Motorsports Park, and Nashville Superspeedway.

However, at the start of 2012, the series dropped down to 22 races, reached a low of 21 races in 2021, and settled at 23 for the past two seasons. Now, the schedule is back to 25 for 2025.

So, with this expansion, what’s different, and how could it affect the season as a whole?

What’s Old and What’s New?

In total, the Craftsman Truck Seris will have six new tracks on the schedule. Of course, the math does not add up to the two additional races, but the new races complement much broader changes to the 2024 schedule.

Four tracks will depart the schedule from 2024: COTA, Kansas, Milwaukee, and World Wide Technology Raceway. To compensate, NASCAR is adding familiar tracks. These include Michigan, which has not had a truck race since 2020; New Hampshire, which has not had a race since 2017; Rockingham, which has not had a race since 2013; and Watkins Glen, which has not had a race since 2021.

Alongside these, NASCAR added the Charlotte Roval, now a triple header weekend, and Lime Rock Park as part of the additional two races. So, why did NASCAR make such drastic changes?

We may never know exactly why, but one specific trend with this schedule might tell us.

These changes could have been made for any reason. As the lowest touring level of the NASCAR National Series, the changes may have been related to travel costs, as this new schedule adds five East Coast tracks, saving the teams time and money on the road. However, the addition of more road course races could also have played into the call.

Rookies on the Road

This new schedule removes one road course from 2025, Circuit of the Americas, the only one on the Truck calendar in 2024. However, to compensate for this, NASCAR added three new road course races, growing the schedule back to three.

The Truck Series has a long history of memorable moments on road courses such as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Watkins Glen. In its early years, the series went to three road courses a year; however, for the majority of the 2000s and 2010s, they even dropped to zero before returning to three in 2022.

A return to multiple road courses will be extremely valuable to the series’ status as a proving ground for young talent. While ARCA has a handful of these tracks, this will be the first time this massive six-driver rookie class will race on road courses with full-time NASCAR veterans and “road course ringers.”

These tracks, the Roval, Lime Rock Park, and Watkins Glen, are all different types of road courses, giving drivers a grip on the ever-changing National Series schedule as well.

The addition of an expanded truck and road course schedule in the truck series is by no means controversial and will be welcomed by fans, teams, and, hopefully, the series’ young drivers in 2025.

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