Brett Moffitt overcomes inconsistency on way to Truck title

Teams that struggle with funding tend to race inconsistently. They also tend to have some of their best races at the start of the season before those who have more resources improve on their equipment at a faster rate.

Brett Moffitt had that inconsistency throughout much of the 2018 Camping World Truck Series schedule. After a crash in the season-opening race at Daytona, Moffitt won at Atlanta to start a streak of three consecutive top-5 finishes.

He wouldn’t have two consecutive top-10 finishes the rest of the year until the final four races of the season. His Hattori Racing Enterprises truck came alive with a second at Martinsville, a third at Texas and then back-to-back wins at Phoenix and Homestead to capture the 2018 crown.

Moffitt won six races on the way to the title. But for much of the year it would be like his summer stretch — win at Iowa, 14th at Gateway, win at Chicagoland, 18th at Kentucky, fifth at Eldora, 26th at Pocono and win at Michigan.

“Our inconsistency was just due to poor execution and things happening,” Moffitt said. “I feel like everywhere but Kentucky, I feel like we had a race-winning truck. It was just whether or not we had things go our way and executed the race properly.”

The HRE team was one of the few organizations that used a Toyota Racing Development motor for much of the season. As NASCAR implemented the optional use of a spec Ilmor engine this year, it periodically changed rules — and depending on one’s view, the rules were changed to create a balance of power or to give the NASCAR spec engine the edge.

Moffitt used the spec engine at Homestead. The team felt it would be much better, with the exception of being able to accelerate faster on the restarts.

“I felt confident that we could win,” Moffitt crew chief Scott Zipadelli said. “I felt like we should have won three or four more races that we gave away. That’s the way it goes.

“To win six and then come down here, and like last week, we hear all the boo-hoo and whining about our engine. … We put our heads down and worked on our program, and Brett did everything he needed to do, the pit crew did everything they needed to do, the guys at the shop; it was just kind of a perfect execution for the past two or three weeks preparing for this.”

While he perfectly executed, the other team with six wins this year — the GMS Racing team of Johnny Sauter — struggled in the final weeks of the season.

“Momentum is definitely a factor in this sport, and I can speak from past experience,” Sauter said. “In ’16 we got hot towards the end of the year, especially around the playoff time, and won a couple races and came down here and had a good run and won the championship.

“Momentum is definitely a big factor in this deal. So, yeah, I wasn’t surprised [with Moffitt]. I knew just looking at the lap tracker that they had good speed in their truck, and I felt like that’s the guy we were chasing. … When you get on a roll, sometimes you feel invincible, and they just had it going on.”

It was something they couldn’t predict at the start of the year with the organization uncertain if it could make it to every race during the season.

“It was late in the offseason that this deal came together, and I didn’t know how many races it was going to be for, and fortunately we were able to go out there and win a race early and get everyone’s minds thinking of what this year could be,” Moffitt said.

“It took a lot of hard work, a lot of frustration, but in the end we prevailed.”