Bayley Currey Has Career Night at Bristol in Return to Driver’s Seat

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Bayley Currey is normally the car chief for TRICON Garage’s No. 1 Toyota in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. At Bristol Motor Speedway on Thursday, Sept. 17, he climbed into the No. 5 Toyota as the driver. It’s the first race of at least a two-race opportunity this season for him.

Making his first Truck start since the 2025 season finale, Currey came up 1.305 seconds shy of his first trip to victory lane.

“Oh dude, it was a blast,” he told Fronstretch post-race. “You know, you can’t come to a better place than Bristol Motor Speedway. I love this place. Yeah, I was a little worried. I knew we had really good speed in practice. I thought we laid down a really good qualifying lap, which didn’t get to stand because of the rain. And, I don’t know, I was concerned about passing tonight. The track opened up really nice. Whatever they did for track prep tonight, just keep doing it every time. That was about the perfect balance top to bottom in my opinion. So, yeah, tons of fun.”

Currey was P9 in practice, but lined up 16th to start the race due to the lineup set via the metric due to qualifying being cancelled due to lightning.

As the first race of the Truck Series Chase, those Chase drivers dominated the first stage. Currey wheeled his No. 5 into ninth at the end of stage two. Moreover, the pace was quick as the first two stages were completed in about 40 minutes.

“This place is definitely, granted it’s a half-mile, an aero racetrack,” Currey noted. “So the further forward you are, the faster you’re going to go. Just how these things race. But, yeah, once we got up there, the truck ran great. I don’t know; i could be happier but I could be unhappier.”

During the pit stop after stage two, misfortune struck the dominant Front Row Motorsports duo of Layne Riggs and Chandler Smith. As such, new contenders emerged, specifically Jake Garcia, Stewart Friesen and Currey.

Garcia and Friesen combined to lead all but one lap in the final stage, including fending off the field after a red flag to clean up oil from Caden Kvapil’s No. 76.

While the cleanup was obviously necessary, the cleaned-up surface affected Currey’s ability to challenge for the victory.

“Well, really what I needed was to not put so much Speedy-Dry down when that car oiled that track down,” Currey said. “Had a kind of dry slick spot coming out of 2, the very bottom. In the green-flag run before that, I could kind of get up above it and keep my exit, but whenever I was bottom of 3, I had to run right through it and got a little sideways there and continue to buzz my tires on exit. I don’t know, if things go a little differently, if I had it different, I might’ve got aggressive, knocked the No. 98 up the track and then just went through [turns] 1 and 2 on that restart. Next time.”

Friesen slipped to third as Currey got by him, but Currey couldn’t catch Garcia, who won for the first time in his Truck Series career.

Currey notched his first NASCAR national series top five and top 10 at Bristol. To boot, it was his career-best Truck Series result.

“For sure, I feel like this is one of my better places,” Currey added. “I think tracks I grew up racing at, Houston Motorsports Park got concrete corners. The half-mile behind Texas Motor Speedway when I was an eight-year-old kid felt just like this place. … I love this place and I’m really happy about it.”

Currey’s happiness with his Bristol outcome will likely be short-lived. Because he has to return to his day job with TRICON. The next Truck race is in nine days at Kansas Speedway, a 1.5-mile venue compared to the 0.533-mile Tennessee short track.

“We’ll get the 12 hours when we get home tonight and then we’ll be back at the shop,” he continued. “We’ve got to switch things around for Kansas so we’ve got a quick turnaround.”

With only six more races left this Truck season, Currey confirmed that he has at least one more Truck start in the No. 5. Leaving Bristol, the No. 5 is 16th in owner point standings, 59 out of 11th place.