Green Soaks Up Knowledge During Martinsville Truck Race

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Despite a brake issue that hampered his qualifying effort at Martinsville Speedway, Clayton Green learned and moved forward Friday night in his second-ever NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start.

Green had no stopping power in time trials, leaving him 35th on the 36-truck starting grid, but he was able to keep his No. 22 Royal Vista Inc. Ford F-150 clean throughout the Zip ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ 200 at the .526-mile paper clip.

That lack of chaos allowed Green to quietly gain positions even while battling a tight handling condition in the first two stages. His Reaume Brothers Racing team, led by crew chief Pedro Lopez, worked on the truck at halfway and got the truck to turn better, letting Green make his way to 24th by the checkers.

The 27-year-old from Marble Falls, Texas, advanced the fifth-most positions of any driver in Friday’s race, with 11 spots gained over the course of the 200-lap race, and improved his career-best finish by 10 as well.

“After losing brakes in qualifying and barely saving it enough for us to make the feature with a clean truck, we were breathing a sigh of relief just from that alone,” said Green after the race. “That put us in the back to start and we just had to work our way forward. Got tight early on in the race, got it fixed [in stage one] and then fixed it a little bit more. We actually made it just a little too free on the first change, but dialed it back and we had it pretty good on the long run [in the second half].

“From there, I was a bit held back in traffic for the rest of the race, but worked with what I had and just really focused on race craft and trying to get smoother while not affecting any of the frontrunners,” he added. “The finishing number might not show it as easily, but I felt like we got better throughout the night and really made some progress.”

In an elimination race with championship hopefuls around him throughout the night, Green had to balance his own race with the goal of not being a factor in those fighting to make the Championship 4.

“I was trying to be respectful; anytime any playoff guys got around me, I let them go. I didn’t want to mess up their nights. I wasn’t going to play that stupid game with this being just my second race, you know?” he noted. “I felt like we did the best we could with that and maximized what was in our control.”

With his final Truck Series start of the year behind him, Green’s focus now shifts toward 2025 and putting together opportunities to return to the NASCAR national series level next season.

“I was just happy to learn a lot from this experience this weekend and, hopefully, I get another [Truck Series] opportunity and can come back and do even better,” he concluded.