ThorSport Racing, a championship-winning organization, has elected to make another crew chief change ahead of Thursday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Ben Rhodes, the 2021 NASCAR Truck Series champion, will have his third different crew chief of the season, as Rich Lushes rejoins the No. 99 Ford F-150 team for the final four events of the 2023 NASCAR Truck Series campaign.
Rosters for @ThorSportRacing show the team has swapped the #13 and #99 crew chiefs ahead of Thursday's #UNOH200 at Bristol.
Rich Lushes and Ben Rhodes, who won the 2021 NCTS title together, will be reunited. Hailie Deegan will now be paired with Brian Ross.#NASCAR
— Joseph Srigley (@joe_srigley) September 13, 2023
Lushes had been working with Hailie Deegan as the crew chief of the No. 13 Ford F-150 through the opening 19 rounds of the 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season, which resulted in a single top-10 result – a sixth-place finish at Texas.
Prior to being broken up at the start of the year, the combination of Rhodes and Lushes had seemingly gelled over the pairing’s two seasons working together, picking up the 2021 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title, and then finishing runner-up in points the next year.
In 45 starts working together between 2021 and 2022, the duo have secured three victories in the series, as well as 16 top-five results, and 29 results inside the top-10, en route to two of Rhodes’ best seasons in the NASCAR Truck Series.
Brian Ross, who was brought on to serve as crew chief of the No. 99 following a victory at Charlotte Motor Speedway, will jump over to ThorSport Racing’s No. 13 Ford F-150 for the final four events of the year at Bristol, Talladega, Homestead, and Phoenix.
With the crew chief swap between Rhodes and Deegan, and the four-race suspension of Joe Shear, Jr. following an L2-level penalty at Milwaukee, none of the four full-time entries for ThorSport Racing will have the crew chiefs at Bristol, that they started the year with.
