Waiting for a green flag: ThorSport Racing hopes to build on hot start when NASCAR Truck Series resumes

The NASCAR trucks series began its 1997 and 1998 seasons with a single mid-January race at Walt Disney World Speedway then took a 10-week break. That schedule did not last because the long pause before the second race was not popular. The teams in the modern-day Gander Outdoor Truck Series are hoping the current layoff forced by the coronavirus isn't that long. But before racing can resume, teams will have to get back in their shops. ThorSport Racing is waiting out Ohio's stay-at-home order -- which will last the entire month of April -- before getting back to business as usual at its Perkins Township headquarters. "We're just kind of in limbo," ThorSport general manager David Pepper said. "Whenever we can come back we'll need to maybe change some of the scheduling to accommodate for social distancing so we don't have guys on top of each other working on the trucks. "I'm sure we'll get ahead of this in the next month or so and we'll be back racing and we'll be back in here building trucks." NASCAR was on the verge of running races in Atlanta in mid-March when the virus stopped the sports world in its tracks. ThorSport's haulers arrived at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Thursday night, March 12, before everything changed during what Pepper called "the most bizarre weekend." The team had unloaded its equipment before NASCAR initially announced that the races would go on, but without fans. "Here you are coming to compete and all the fans are loading up their motorhomes," Pepper said. "There was nobody coming into the track. Everyone's leaving and you're coming in." Plan B was to qualify and race on Friday night, scrapping the original Saturday afternoon race date. But as other sports canceled big-name events, NASCAR soon fell in line. "We're at the gate ready to go in (Friday) and the right decision, obviously, was made: We're not gonna run; you guys can load up and go home," Pepper said. "As a competitor, in your mind you get yourself geared up to compete. You go through a range of emotions. You're angry, you're upset, you're disappointed. You've already made the trip, let's just do it. That goes through your head. "The equipment was all unloaded, and then we loaded it all back up. You change 40 flights, you change the travel. Our office manager (Jamie Mathews) had to do a lot of that stuff. We all got on planes and flew back home." Pepper said once he and his team landed back in Ohio, it was apparent that life had changed dramatically in just a couple days. "When we got to Cleveland, it was very noticeable that the airport was not as busy as it would normally be," he said. It was a tough break for ThorSport, which was off to a great start after two races. Each of the team's four drivers had recorded a top-five finish and Grant Enfinger won the opener at Daytona. Johnny Sauter finished second at Las Vegas. Now the team doesn't know when it will get to compete again. Five races have been postponed, with the next scheduled race May 15 at Charlotte. "Could that change? I think it probably will," Pepper said. "Until we get on the back side of this and people can resume our normal lives, all of the sports and taking a wait-and-see approach. "Racing is definitely taking a back seat to the more important topics of keeping people safe." The truck series features 23 races and there are several off weeks, but rescheduling won't be easy. "A lot of that will be dictated by the Cup races," Pepper said. "They wouldn't take us to Dover by ourselves. They have to figure out how to slot these all together. I would not want to be the guys at NASCAR trying to figure out when we're going to run races. "Whatever it ends up being — midweek races, doubleheaders — we want to run them all and get all these postponed events back on the calendar. We can finish later in the year. We want to run 23 truck races and hopefully win the championship again with one of these trucks." A pristine shop will await the team — which hasn't had any layoffs — when it's time to get back to work. The facility was recently given a thorough cleaning and was disinfected. "Nobody's sick," Pepper said, "but it seemed like a good time to do that with nobody in there."