In the 2000 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season finale at Auto Club Speedway, an unknown 24-year-old by the name of Matt Crafton made his series debut for ThorSport Racing and finished ninth.
Since then, 584 Truck Series races have been run across 25 seasons. Crafton has been in every single one of them. Aside from the 2004 season, when he drove for Kevin Harvick Incorporated, he has always driven for ThorSport Racing, and in all but one race for ThorSport, he has driven the No. 88 machine, which has been sponsored by Menards since 2002.
Going back to 2005, this 21-year partnership between driver, team, and primary sponsor is the longest running partnership in any of NASCAR's top three series.
Had it not been for the one-year gap with KHI, it would be the longest ever, surpassing the 23-year Cup Series run between Jeff Gordon, Hendrick Motorsports, and DuPont/Axalta. Even Richard Petty's iconic No. 43 was only sponsored by STP for 21 seasons, and not all of them were with Petty Enterprises.
But all things must eventually end, and on Monday, it was announced that Crafton will retire from Truck Series competition at the conclusion of 2025.
Putting Matt Crafton's career into perspective brings up some mind-boggling facts
Let's take our time capsule back to Crafton's debut in the fall of 2000 and look around at just how different the NASCAR world was. Dale Earnhardt was still alive. Darrell Waltrip was still an active Cup Series driver. Jimmie Johnson was completing his first full Busch (now Xfinity) Series season driving for William Herzog's team. The future seven-time champion had yet to make a single start at the top level.
There were no playoffs. No overtime finishes (though the Truck Series did have the old "green, white, checkered" rule). No double-file restarts or free passes or wave arounds. When a caution came out, drivers would race back to the line, even with wrecked vehicles sitting in the middle of the track surface.
The HANS device wasn't mandatory. SAFER barriers didn't exist. Driver deaths and critical injuries were something that happened on what seemed like at least an annual basis and were accepted as an unfortunate reality with which NASCAR must simply cope. It was a completely different sport, one that would be considered borderline barbaric in the modern world.
In his Truck Series debut, Crafton competed against Joe Ruttman, a driver who made a Cup Series start in 1963. Today, he's competing against drivers of barely one-third his age, who will likely be racing into the 2040s, perhaps even the 2050s.
Possibly most mind-blowing of all, though, is that for as long as Crafton has been around, he has compiled a grand total of 15 career wins. For comparison, Corey Heim, who has been in the series for less than four full seasons, has 18.
Crafton won only one time in his first 10 seasons and has also only found victory lane once in the past eight. In fact, two-thirds of his wins came in a span of three years, between 2014 and 2016.
He has three championships, and for that and his longevity, he will be remembered as one of the all-time Truck Series greats. Mostly though, he'll go down as a guy who was just always there. In 2000, he was there. In 2010, he was there. In 2025, for now, he's still there.
He was there to race with Truck Series pioneers such as Ron Hornaday Jr., Mike Skinner, and Jack Sprague. He was there for the start of every top prospect's career who has come through the level, from Kurt Busch to Brent Crews. Pick any era of Trucks as long as the year starts with a 2, and Crafton's bright yellow No. 88 has been a part of it. Probably not winning very often, but certainly existing.
How good was Crafton? It's hard to tell. Maybe he genuinely found lightning in a bottle for those few years in the mid-2010s, or maybe it was due to a dip in competition from the Hornadays of the world being phased out while the series hadn't quite fully transitioned into the developmental ladder rung it is today. One thing is for certain though: it's going to feel weird watching Truck Series races without him next year.