Cody Ware set to miss NASCAR race at Bristol due to personal reasons

Cody Ware will be unavailable from the Food City Dirt Race due to a personal issue. For the NASCAR Cup Series race weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, the No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Ford Mustang will be driven by a different driver.

Cody Ware, 27, was scheduled to race in the Food City Dirt Race on Sunday. Matt Crafton, driver of the No. 88 ThorSport Ford and three-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, will take up driving responsibilities for the team. Crafton will also compete in the Weather Guard Truck Race on Dirt on Saturday.

Ware will miss the Bristol Motor Speedway race for the first time since the 2022 season. While recovering from an injury received at Texas Motor Speedway, he was unable to race at the Charlotte Roval on October 9, 2022.

Crafton has spent his whole NASCAR career in the Craftsman Truck Series, driving the No. 88 Ford F-150 for ThorSport Racing and has won three titles. He has also participated in the other two national series.

Crafton raced for Richard Childress Racing in four Xfinity Series races, three in 2013 and one in 2014. He finished all four races, including one top-10 at Chicagoland Speedway and two top-three finishes at Kentucky Speedway.

Crafton has attempted to qualify for several Cup Series races, but he has only raced in two. He raced for Joe Gibbs Racing in the 2015 Daytona 500, finishing 18th overall. He subsequently joined Front Row Motorsports for the 2019 Martinsville Speedway event, finishing 25th.

Crafton will make his third career start in place of Cody Ware. On April 8, he will compete against a limited set of Cup Series rivals in one of four heat races, followed by the Food City Dirt Race on April 9.

---

Cody Ware's replacement to pull a Double Duty at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend

Matt Crafton in action at NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series XPEL 225

During the race weekend, Matt Crafton will also do double duty. On April 8, he will compete in the Truck Series event at Bristol Motor Speedway, where he will drive the No. 88 Ford F-150. The three-time Truck Series winner has no experience in the Next Gen Ford Mustang, but he will only have a little time to learn before racing in the Food City Dirt Race.

Crafton will compete in one of the 15-lap heat races on Saturday, April 8, assuming that the on-track action is not cancelled due to bad weather. This isn't much time, but it will give Crafton a sense of how the big stock car handles the dirt surface.

Pulling double duty, as Stewart-Haas Racing's Chase Briscoe revealed at a pre-Bristol press conference, is not advantageous in the usual sense. Trucks and cars behave differently. However, he pointed out that there is an advantage in that the drivers will be able to watch how the racing surface varies throughout an event.