Thompson Continuing To Impress With Sam Hunt Racing

Dean Thompson (Declan Wayman photo)

CONCORD, N.C. – In a year where Dean Thompson wasn’t necessarily expected to be a leading Sunoco rookie-of-the-year contender in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he’s continued to show impressive results as the lone full-time entry at Sam Hunt Racing.

Thompson continued his recent surge by collecting his first Xfinity Series top five, as well as his fourth top 10 of the season, last Saturday in the BetMGM 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

After starting his No. 26 Toyota Supra from the 23rd spot, Thompson worked hard all afternoon at the rugged 1.5-mile quad-oval, quietly driving his way inside the top 10 late in the race and avoiding the chaos of several late race cautions inside the final 15 laps as well.

Despite staying consistent throughout the race and maintaining his position in the top 15, Thompson was unable to score stage points, ranking 15th in both stages.

During what turned out to be the final pit stop of the event, Thompson’s pit crew unfortunately turned in a slow stop, which dropped him back to 12th before the caution came out for a spinning Blaine Perkins that almost derailed the entire day for the 23-year-old Anaheim, Calif., driver.

Yet, undeterred, Thompson drove back up to ninth before the final caution came out.

Thompson took the inside line while in fifth place during the 11th and final yellow, which forced the race into an overtime finish. He closely followed eventual race winner William Byron as the Cup Series regular moved to the front, pushing reigning Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier aside.

As the field took the white flag, Thompson fell back in line and managed to hold off a late charge from Josh Williams, ultimately crossing the finish line sixth behind JR Motorsports’ Sammy Smith.

Dean Thompson in action at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Declan Wayman photo)

However, Smith’s Chevrolet failed post-race technical inspection and was disqualified, promoting Thompson to his first career top five in Xfinity Series competition.

“I feel like this track really suits me well,” Thompson said of his career-best day. “My guys put together a really good Thompson Pipe Group Toyota GR Supra.

“We didn’t have a great practice or a great qualifying effort, but I knew we had good long run speed, so we kind of played into that,” he added. “Just minded our p’s and q’s on the restarts and the long runs and just kind of played out really well for us in the end.”

Thompson displayed long-run speed and remained in a position to set himself up to be successful in a gutsy ending to the BetMGM 300, persistence that paid dividends in the end.

“I knew our long run speed was significantly better than our short run speed. We just kind of played into that,” he noted. “I picked them off on restarts and the long runs. Ended up with a really good result. Glad we ran well. My team did a really good job.

“My crew chief (Kris Bowen) is way smarter than I am, because I wanted to pit and he didn’t, and we ended up with a pretty good result [because of that].”

Notably, Thompson is now tied for the third-most top 10s as a Sam Hunt Racing driver, with his four matching John Hunter Nemechek’s quartet from the team’s early years.

Only Corey Heim (six) and Kaz Grala (nine) have more top 10s driving for Sam Hunt’s organization.

After his latest solid outing, Thompson finds himself in the middle of a heated rookie points battle, ranking 16th in the regular season standings behind fellow rookie Daniel Dye, who sits 18 points ahead of Thompson heading into the Tennessee Lottery 250 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway.

Thompson is just 42 points behind Harrison Burton for the final spot on the provisional playoff grid through 13 of 26 regular season races.

Broadcast coverage from the Music City is slated for Saturday night, May 31 at 7:30 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.