{"id":79144,"date":"2025-08-18T16:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/79144\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T16:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:45:07","slug":"three-time-nascar-champion-to-retire-after-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/79144\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-time NASCAR champion to retire after 2025 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A storied NASCAR career will come to an end after 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> Three-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion and 15-time race winner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nascar\/players\/matt_crafton\/202055\" class=\"yard_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Crafton<\/a> will retire following the Truck Series championship race at Phoenix Raceway, concluding a NASCAR career that has spanned 25 years.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Crafton, 49, has spent the entirety of his NASCAR Truck Series career \u2014 save for 2004 \u2014 with ThorSport Racing. His partnership with Menards has made his No. 88 truck iconic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Following Friday&#8217;s eero 250 at Richmond Raceway, Crafton has made a total of 585 Truck Series starts and 592 across the top-three series of NASCAR competition. His last Truck Series victory came at Kansas in July 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Crafton failed to qualify for the 2025 Truck Series playoffs and will not compete for a fourth title in his final season. 2025 marks the second consecutive year that Crafton has missed the postseason and the second time he&#8217;s missed it since NASCAR instituted the playoffs in the Truck Series in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Through 18 races in 2025, Crafton is 16th in the Truck Series standings with three top-10 finishes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Defending Truck Series champion and ThorSport driver Ty Majeski will take over the No. 88 in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A storied NASCAR career will come to an end after 2025.\u00a0 Three-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-79144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}