NASCAR CTS: Ready or Not, Here We Come
14 May 1998
ODESSA, Mo. - Randy Tolsma and the No. 61 IWX Motor Freight Chevrolet NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team are carrying a lot of momentum into the Yellow Freight 200 race here at I-70 Speedway on May 23."I think this is going to be a good track for us," said Tolsma, 32, a native of Meridian, Idaho. "The track is a lot like Mesa Marin in Bakersfield, Calif. and we won that race last year. We're taking the same truck that we ran at Bakersfield, which is the one we've used in the last two races."
That's a good sign when you consider the last two races. At Portland (Ore.) on April 25, Tolsma started third and raced to a strong second-place finish. He followed that up at the series' most recent race, at Evergreen (Wash.) Speedway on May 9, with an impressive drive from the 14th-starting spot to a 3rd-place finish. The impressive runs, along with a 10th-place finish at Phoenix on April 19, have moved Tolsma from 26th to seventh in the series point standings in the past three races.
"I've never been happier in my life," said Tolsma. "That is partially because we are running so well, but more importantly it's because of this series. In this series we can race with each other. We occasionally can hit somebody a little bit and not really get them bent out of shape, because this is just good hard racing.
"I think some race fans think that racing pickup trucks is a gimmick, but trust me, this is real racing," continued Tolsma. "It's probably a lot more racing than some other things going on out there. The trucks don't have an incredible amount of downforce, so the driver is still in control in a big way.
"That's what is fun," he concluded. "The race at Odessa will be a typical short track race with a lot of routing and gouging." The Yellow Freight 200 will get the green flag at 3:00 p.m. CDT on Saturday, May 23. Qualifying will be on Friday, May 22 at 4:15 p.m. The Nashville Network (TNN) has live television coverage of the race with the NASCAR Truck Network providing live radio coverage.
IWX Motor Freight is a Springfield, Mo. based trucking firm having a fleet of 400 trucks. IWX serves 48 states and annually the trucks will log more than 98 million miles.
# # # The Yellow Freight 200 at I-70 Speedway is the home race for IWX Motor Freight, sponsor of the No. 61 Chevrolet driven by Randy Tolsma. A rather large group of Randy Tolsma fans will be heading north from IWX headquarters in Springfield for the race at the .543-mile oval.
The fact that it's the closest race to the sponsor is always strong incentive for a NASCAR team to perform well. That combined with the race being sponsored by a competitor, Yellow Freight, makes it a big goal for Tolsma and the IWX team.
"Yellow Freight is a big company, and a competitor of IWX," said Randy Tolsma in a recent interview. "We want to win that race because it's close to a lot of our people. But, that big winners check and that Yellow Freight trophy would look awful nice on our mantle."
