Hailie Deegan’s new crew chief “expects her to be aggressive,” as he fires a warning to the Truck Garage


Hailie Deegan’s new crew chief “expects her to be aggressive,” as he fires a warning to the Truck Garage

Hailie Deegan and Rich Lushes

Hailie Deegan has much pressure on her shoulders going into the 2023 Truck season. The Californian native is provided with a chance to prove herself to the NASCAR garage with the new ThorSports contract.  

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Deegan left her previous team DGR after the team rebranded itself to TRICON garage and joined TRD. Being a Ford Athlete, she had no option but to search for a team sporting the manufacturer’s cars. That’s when ThorSports, who returned to Ford after spending two seasons with TRD, came calling. She is now contracted to drive the No:13 truck next year.

Though her Xfinity series promotion dream didn’t materialize, she now can fight to win in every race. It’s something Deegan never had in her two mediocre years in the third-tier NASCAR series. One of the main factors holding her back in the last two seasons was the aggression shown to her by the competitors.

Rich Lushes, her new crew chief, has warned the truck garage that such will not be tolerated by her or the team in 2023. He said, “Yeah. We touched on that a little bit. As we get closer to Daytona, we’re touching on it some more. I expect her to be aggressive. I expect her to not take anything from anyone. And I think that’s how she’s going to be, and that’s the mindset she’s in right now,”.

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Rich Lushes is one of the experienced crew chiefs on the series, and his appointment can be big advantage for Deegan moving forward. He won the cup championship with Ben Rhodes, who will be Deegan’s teammate next year, in 2021, leading him to yet another playoff spot in 2022.

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Hailie Deegan once accused the experienced drivers in the Truck garage don’t respect her and claimed that the Xfinity series is better in terms of respect

Hailie Deegan
Hailie Deegan

Hailie Deegan once pointed out that the, compared to young drivers, is hard on her on and off track on incidents during the race. She also called out the hypocrisy of those groups where they criticize her for doing the exact thing they did to her to them during the race.

So, I notice whenever I get into incidents with some of the older guys on the track, it always drags on and it’s always a lot more heightened than it is with the younger guys. Like wrecks, hard battles. It’s like they can do something to me, but if I do it back it’s a problem. I’m like, ‘Well you just did the same thing.’” She told the I Am Athlete-NASCAR podcast last year.

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After her impressive debut in the Xfinity series, where she finished P13 for SS Greenlight Racing, Deegan pointed out that the Xfinity drivers are more respectful than the Truck drivers. She also added that the series has more dimension than single-line racing in the Truck series.

It changes a lot of things being able to finesse with throttle, brake, deciding what to do — dump out of it, crack the throttle — there’s just so many different things that you can do, whereas like the trucks, it’s pretty much one lane, one way, and you kind of just hope for the best. And everyone races very clean in this series, it seems like. There’s a lot of respect and I really like that,” Deegan told NBC.

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