No. 71 TRUCK

Rajah Caruth, the 2024 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Most Popular Driver, drives the No. 71 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Silverado for Spire Motorsports. The 2024 season marked a career year for the Washington, D.C. native. He earned his first career NCTS pole position and victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The win positioned him amongst exclusive company including NASCAR Hall of Famer, Wendell Scott and current NASCAR Cup Series regular Bubba Wallace as one-of-three African-American drivers to win a NASCAR National Touring Series race. In total, the 22-year-old tallied one win, a pair of Cometic Gasket Pole Awards and five top-five finishes in 2024, all of which were the first of his young career. His 12 top-10 finishes on the season tripled Caruth’s total of four in 2023, while his average starting position of 10.7 was four positions higher than 2023 and his 11.6 average finish is an impressive seven positions better than the season prior. He qualified for the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series playoffs via his victory at Las Vegas and finishing the regular season fifth in the point standings. Caruth and Co. reached the Round of 8 in the division’s playoff format, just missing a spot in the Championship 4. Caruth capped off the exciting calendar year by completing his Bachelor of Science in Motorsports Management at Winston-Salem (N.C.) State University. In addition to winning the 2024 CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Most Popular Driver award, Caruth was named the 2021 Wendell Scott Trailblazer Award recipient in the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series, an award based on a driver’s final Weekly Series national standing and on-track performance, sportsmanship and community service. He is a graduate of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program.

Kevin “Bono” Manion, one of the founding fathers of the Spire Motorsports CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Team, enters his fourth season with the organization as the crew chief for Rajah Caruth and the No. 71 team. Last season, Manion led Nick Sanchez to wins at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway and Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway. The duo earned a birth to the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series playoffs and advanced to the Round of 8. Manion stood atop the pit box for races in all three NASCAR national series in 2023, one of a select few to accomplish the feat in a single season. He helped kickstart Spire’s CRAFTSMAN Truck Series operation alongside industry veteran Mike Greci in 2022, competing in 11 events throughout the calendar. The team earned their first victory in only their second attempt at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway with William Byron behind the wheel. He is a two-time NASCAR Xfinity Series championship-winning crew chief and the 2010 Daytona 500 and 2010 Brickyard 400-winning crew chief. He is one of a select few crew chiefs to have won races across all three of NASCAR’s Cup, Xfinity and CRAFTSMAN Truck Series.