With less than 15 laps remaining in Friday’s Weather Guard Truck Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Niece Motorsports watched on as a mechanical issue derailed what was shaping up to be an all-around career night for Bayley Currey.
After beating out eventual race-winner Chandler Smith for the Stage 2 victory and staying inside the top-five throughout the race’s final stage, Currey found himself in the four-truck dogfight for the race lead in the final 25 laps of Friday’s 250-lapper.
The 14 laps that Currey paced the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series field is a single-race record for the Texan in NASCAR’s National Series, and far and away exceeds the total number of laps he’d led throughout his Truck Series career prior to Friday.
“Niece [Motorsports] brought me a great [truck],” Currey told Frontstretch. “We’ve had some good runs this year, we’ve had some decent finishes, and we’ve had some that haven’t gone our way, and this one stings a little bit. Couldn’t be happier, you know, we got our first stage win, went up there and led laps, felt like we had a really fast truck, a truck that could win the race.”
.@BayleyCurrey was “really, really proud” of his No. 44 @NieceMotorsport team and their effort at Bristol.
Currey shares that a driveshaft broke in the closing laps of the race.
?@calebbarnes_ #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/Q0UZXXCTSZ
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) April 12, 2025
“To have a driveshaft break, ultimately, it sucks, but really proud of this group, proud of what they’ve done. We really struggled a lot last year and over the off-season felt like we really came together and yeah, it’s showing.”
The native of Driftwood, Texas was running inside the top-five on a late-race restart, with a legitimate shot at scoring his first career NASCAR Truck Series event, when the No. 44 Chevrolet Silverado ran out of steam, plummeting through the field at an alarming rate.
After bringing his Masked Owl Technologies Chevrolet to the attention of crew chief Wally Rogers and Niece Motorsports, the team diagnosed the culprit as a driveshaft that broke.
“It started vibrating and I could feel it, but I thought maybe something was dragging the ground,” Currey said of his issue. “I definitely noticed a power loss there, because when I was running being [Heim and Caruth] my plan was I was going to sit here and ride and wait until we got to lapped traffic and go try to make a move there, because the guys on older tires seemed to really struggle on the lapped traffic, and once I started going I had to start driving harder.”
Following a full-time bid in the NASCAR Truck Series in 2024, Currey was not scheduled to run but a limited schedule for Niece Motorsports this season, until a sponsorship issue kept previously announced full-timer Christian Rose from jumping in the No. 44.
So far this season, Currey has taken on the share of the driving in the entry, splitting time with Ross Chastain and Matthew Gould. However, in his limited starts this season, Currey matched a career-best fourth-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Friday at Bristol was a powerful statement to those watching the 28-year-old driver, who has been competing in underfunded rides across NASCAR’s National Series for several years, until getting this opportunity with Niece Motorsports.
“I just try to focus on us and Niece Motorsports and the No. 44 team,” Currey said when asked about the statement his run on Friday makes. “It’s cool to go race up front with those guys, when its me it’s just another truck with a number on the side, I don’t know if it’s that way for them, but it’s that way for me, were just going to keep working on it and park it in Victory Lane.”
Although a second top-five wasn’t in the cards for Currey on Friday night, the Driftwood, Texas-native and long-time NASCAR journeyman proved to the masses that when put into the right situation, he can contend for victories.
