Winless this season before Friday night’s TSport 200 at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, Majseki put an old-fashioned beating on the rest of the field in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series playoff opener.
The driver of the No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford cemented a spot in the Round of 8 in dominating fashion, leading 179 of 200 laps, sweeping the first two stages of the race and beating pole winner and runner-up Christian Eckes to the finish line by 3.422s.
That was the smallest margin Majeski held at the end of any stage. He held a 3.904-second advantage over eventual eighth-place finisher Corey Heim at the finish of Stage 1. He was up by six seconds over Heim before the second stage ended under caution for Chris Hacker’s spin on the backstretch.
Clearly, the short-track ace was in his element at the 0.686-mile speedway.
“I’m proud of the effort, but this is just the start of our playoff run,” said Majeski, who failed to win with the fastest truck two weekends ago at Richmond.
In that race, Majeski sped on pit road, and his team failed to cover a late green-flag pit stop by race winner Carson Hocevar. In contrast, the effort of the entire No. 98 team was impeccable on Friday night.
“Mistakes really cost us (at Richmond),” Majeski said. “We learned from those. Obviously, tonight we were in a really similar situation, and we were able to execute on all fronts. The pit crew was great, (crew chief) Joe (Shear Jr.) made great calls, and I felt like I executed pretty good on the restarts.
“We put it all together as a race team tonight, and I’m pretty proud of that.”