How Grant Enfinger ultimately feels about last weekend will take some time.
At 38-years-old, he knows making his NASCAR Cup Series debut was supposed to feel important and meaningful. Enfinger knows this might have been the only time he gets that phone call, so he definitely recognized the weight of the moment.
But right now, heading into an off-weekend fishing trip back home in Alabama, it still feels very procedural. It wasn’t just another race, but he treated it like one, and admits to not taking in the moment as often as he could have.
Enfinger was only in the No. 42 Legacy Motor Club Chevrolet over the weekend at Sonoma Raceway because Noah Gragson was sidelined with a concussion. He got the call late in the week, ‘crammed a lot of preparation in a short amount of time,’ and subjected himself to a condensed version of the weekly Cup Series experience.
“It was extremely unfortunate from Noah’s standpoint to not be in his car,” Enfinger told Sportsnaut on Wednesday night. “It was cool, and really, my old lady and Noah, both of them kept after me about trying to enjoy the moment.”
Again, it’s not a week removed from the experience but Enfinger doesn’t know what he is going to take away from the weekend, one where he started 35th and finished 26th. Enfinger doesn’t spend a lot of time taking a 20,000-foot view of his career mostly because he has generally never had the luxury.
Enfinger’s path to NASCAR Cup series
He is now a nine-time winner in Truck Series competition, becoming one of the modern faces of the tour over the past decade, but his path hasn’t been a straightforward one. Enfinger never had a manufacturer development deal as a teenager nor consistent employment in good equipment until well into his 30s.
Enfinger has survived to this point in part due to his talents as a driver but also his mechanical engineering background. He has spent a large majority of the past two decades racing week-to-week, so making his NASCAR Cup Series debut merely felt like an extension to that lifelong process.
“Everyone wants to race on Sundays when they’re a kid,” Enfinger said. “But I’ve never been someone who could decide his own future. I’ve always taken whatever opportunity shows up. That’s where I’ve been the past seven years.
“I’m 38 years old and living my dream but I’ve done a lot of different things. I’ve had to turn some things down and take paths not traveled. I won the ARCA championship and the next year I’m working on other people’s cars.
“But when I look back on everything, not just this past weekend, it has been a cool experience. It was cool to have the kind of support we had from the team and everyone who makes this work.”
Enfinger, who emerged out of the Gulf Coast short track scene, has only just now started to come around to road racing. He at least made one previous start at Sonoma in the Truck Series, so he wasn’t completely blind.
He’s also spent time working with Chevrolet’s Josh Wise and Scott Speed in the simulator to prepare for road courses as well. He says making his NASCAR Cup debut at Sonoma would have been way more “intimidating” a few years ago only because he wasn’t yet comfortable turning left and right.
“If they told me I could make my Cup debut anywhere I wanted, Sonoma would not have been on my short list,” Enfinger said with a laugh. “But it was fun sliding that car around. The Next Gen is obviously designed more for road course racing than our trucks are.
“They’re as hard to pass in as they say. They turn really good. They stop really good. It was a brand-new experience, but again, once practice started, it felt like a normal race weekend to me.”
And it was one that he says everyone at Legacy Motor Club and GMS Racing was pleased with. Enfinger completed all the laps, advanced nine positions, and brought the car back the way it was unloaded. Now, Enfinger gets to turn his full attention to the final four races of the NASCAR Truck Series regular season and what he hopes to be a deep playoff run afterwards.
Full speed ahead to Truck Series playoffs
He enters next weekend at Nashville Superspeedway third in the championship standings but second in the all-important playoff point category. His two victories are tied with three other drivers for the most in the division this summer.
Most importantly, Enfinger feels like he and crew chief Jeff Hensley have momentum approaching the seven-race playoff that begins on August 11 in Indianapolis.
“I feel like the last five races, both GMS Racing and our 23 team, have started to come into our own,” Enfinger said. “We have top-five speed, we’ve won two of those races, and feel like we could have won a couple of more. I’m really pleased with where we are and what we’re capable of.”
He says the first dozen races were a little frustrating, not because the results were bad, but because they weren’t reflective of the top-five speed he felt they’ve had all along.
“We had some stuff to clean up, and still do, and Hensley would tell you the same,” Enfinger said. “We were just making some silly mistakes. But (teammates) Rajah (Caruth) and Daniel (Dye) have some good tracks coming up and we’re showing some speed as an organization.
“We recognize that we still have some issues but we’re pretty happy right now. We were just sloppy the first couple of races. I would say we’ve cleaned up about 80 percent of that. This deal is just about peaking at the right time and I think we’ve got a good shot of doing that.”
A NASCAR Truck Series championship would be nice, the crowning achievement of a career that perpetually seemed unlikely but Enfinger views it the same way he does making a start at the highest-level last weekend.
It would ultimately be a matter of pride but just the culmination of another season of the day-to-day grind of racing against the odds.
“It’s been awesome,” Enfinger said. “God has blessed me in so many ways. I think back to racing karts with my dad, and I love him to death, but we had no idea what we were doing. And even as we moved up to Legends and then Late Models, ARCA or graduating college, it’s just been a struggle.
“I pinched myself making my first start-and-park in ARCA. It wasn’t until I got to GMS the first time around that I even had a fully funded deal. And even then, I was taking deals working on other people’s cars, so I just pinch myself every couple of months that the struggles led me here.”
The Enfingers have a family, with a second child on a way, with Grant crediting wife Michelle for sticking with him throughout the journey.
“It’s been an emotional rollercoaster for all of them; dad too,” Enfinger said. “I’m blessed to do what I do for a living and the last couple of years have been really good to me.
“I haven’t taken the most conventional path, but I think I appreciate everything more because of it. There are some drivers who take it for granted. They don’t realize how good it is just to get to this level.”
And so, from that standpoint, you can start to understand why Enfinger doesn’t entirely know how to digest his Cup debut. He hasn’t entirely processed making it as a NASCAR Truck Series star yet. The day will come to process last weekend at Sonoma and Enfinger will probably pinch himself over that too.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.