NASCAR Camping World Truck Series teams Niece Motorsports and Reaume Brothers Racing, have effectively swapped the owner points of their No. 44 and No. 34 teams ahead of Friday Night’s LiftKits4Less.com 200 at Darlington Raceway, NASCAR confirmed to TobyChristie.com.
The No. 44 for Niece Motorsports ranked 25th in Owner Points exiting Kansas, while the No. 34 for Reaume Brothers Racing ranked in the 40th position.
Now, the 34 team will head into Darlington Raceway this weekend as the 25th-ranked team in the standings, while the No. 44 team will rank 40th.
While this seems like an, “okay, but why?” moment, it actually makes a lot of sense. The 2021 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season has been run primarily without the benefit of practice and qualifying, meaning the 40-truck fields were put together based on a team’s rank in the series’ owner points.
However, after Friday Night’s event at Darlington, the series will come across back-to-back events where time trials will be contested at Circuit of The Americas and Charlotte, meaning that just being inside the top-40 in owner points isn’t good enough anymore.
When time trials are contested in the NCWTS, the fastest 31 times are locked into the show based on their speed, with provisionals being handed out to the top-four teams that aren’t already in the show. Then, the 36th and final spot is awarded to an eligible past champion* of the series, or the fifth team in line to recieve an owner points provisional.
- In order to be considered eligible for a Past Champions Provisional, you must have won your championship within the last 10 years and run a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event in 2020
Jumping from 40th to 25th in NCWTS Owner Points is a big move for Reaume Brothers Racing and the No. 34 team, giving them an added safety net when it comes to qualifying for events at COTA and Charlotte. Meanwhile, the Niece Motorsports No. 44 has historically shown the pace to qualify inside the top-31, regardless of the track.
So, on the surface, it seems like a win-win ordeal for both Reaume Brothers Racing and Niece Motorsports.
According to Reaume Brothers Racing’s self-proclaimed “supporter-in-chief” Peter Cellino, the deal was one made by two great businessmen.
“Josh Reaume and Al Niece are great businessmen who know a good deal when they see one.”
The No. 44 team has scored a pair of top-10 finishes this season at the hands of NASCAR Cup Series driver Ross Chastain, with a season-best second-place run last weekend at Kansas Speedway. On the other hand, the No. 34 team has had a difficult start to the 2021 campaign, recording a season-best 26th-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with BJ McLeod, who will return to the organization at Darlington, to wheel the team’s No. 34.
