Now a rookie in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Lofton, can’t get much of anything to go right.
Lofton, 24, a winner of six ARCA races en route to the 2009 title, is downright sick of losing in the truck series. He is 14th in points with one top 10 (a third at Dover) in 12 starts.
“It honestly has been tough, not only for me but for my crew chief and car chief and a couple other guys that I brought along with me over to Red Horse from Eddie Sharp’s (ARCA team),” Lofton said. “We were all used to almost nothing could go wrong. I think we really had one mechanical issue last year … and other than that, it was pretty much a picture-perfect season and just something that it became really comfortable and a lot of fun.
“And this year it was in a way very humbling, not that we really got in over our head or thought we were better than anyone else or anything like that. It was just (that) we kind of set our standard for ourselves, and I guess we’ve kind of been knocked from that down and kind of been shown what racing can do to you.”
Saturday’s inaugural Pocono Mountains 125 at Pocono Raceway may be a good opportunity for Lofton to turn the tide. He won one ARCA race at Pocono last year and finished second in the other. He has four starts there, making Pocono one of the few tracks in the truck series where he has as much or more experience than the majority of his competition.
