Rajah Caruth is obsessed.
For a decade now, ever since attending his first Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway in 2014, Caruth has made reaching this point practically his entire identity.
At the same time, the kid who spent countless hours on iRacing dreaming of the day his digital success would become reality, never actually allowed himself to believe this was realistic. There was too much working against him.
He does not look like traditional NASCAR winners
He got too late of a start
He didn’t have the funding to truly pursue a career at the highest levels
And yet, his dad moved their family from Washington D.C. to North Carolina so that he could give it an honest go. Caruth was accepted into the Drive for Diversity program and dedicated every waking hour to learning how to race, for real, at the highest levels of NASCAR.
Now, just five years into that journey, he is a winner in the Craftsman Truck Series.
“There were a lot of days, especially in high school that I did not think I could get here,” Caruth during his post-race winner’s press conference. “I can’t tell you how many times I was at an internship in my junior year … I didn’t think this was at all possible.
“My dad and my mom, my sister, they sacrificed a lot to move me to North Carolina to be a product of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program.”
It’s a program that turned 20 years old earlier in the day.
“I didn’t know that,” Caruth said. “That’s really cool. So, shout out to them, Max Siegel and NASCAR for believing in me from the jump just because I don’t think a lot of people did. Hopefully they start now.”
The Drive for Diversity program, and the adjacent Rev Racing organization, fast tracked Caruth through ARCA and into a full-time rookie Truck Series effort in 2023 but he would need a major benefactor for his career to continue into 2024.
Enter Rick Hendrick.
Caruth made a start for Hendrick Motorsports in the Xfinity Series last fall at Phoenix Raceway and left a positive impression on everyone in the organization. Hendrick is financially supporting his Truck Series effort at Spire Motorsports this season.
If it wasn’t for Hendrick, Caruth isn’t racing right now, much less winning three weeks into the season.
“It would have been tough, you know, not having a family that owns the team or not having been born into this,” Caruth said. “So, I just got really lucky and fortunate that we started that relationship last year and they believe in me enough to represent them — not just here at the race track but all the things I do away from it too.”
Caruth is still a college student at Winston-Salem State University, a historically black college, pursuing a degree in motorsports management. The HBCU element was important to Caruth, because his father Roger is a professor at Howard University, but his Caribbean heritage is too.
Much like his career at large, his victory on Friday night at Las Vegas required both speed and fortune, winning the pole but only finding himself in position to win after several contenders were caught speeding on pit road.
Caruth earned it, as he didn’t speed on pit road, and otherwise executed all race but wondered in the closing laps if the other figurative shoe was about to drop in the form of a caution and restart.
“I was just like thinking what I needed to do if like a caution came out and trying to make it live to the end of the race with how my balance was all night,” Caruth said. “It was being prepared for anything, right?
“It’s easy to get really excited and stuff and get miss your marks and just get caught up in the moment. I was just trying to execute and fortunately no yellow came out and it worked out for us.”
That’s kind of a parallel for his entire career — that Caruth executed and fortune smiled upon him. That’s racing. There was even a point earlier in the race, having lost track position, that crew chief Chad Walter had to tell his driver ‘you haven’t made a mistake in five hours’ and that sometimes racing things happen.
Caruth experienced that full spectrum in Las Vegas on Friday.
“I just feel relieved, right, to be locked in the playoffs now,” he said. “Beyond that, it doesn’t change anything. We will prepare just as hard and do all the little things right and adjust to the circumstances accordingly.
“So this doesn’t change my outlook for the rest of the season. I feel relieved because I haven’t won anything since I was in Late Models. I’ve come close in ARCA and stuff the past couple of years.
“To finally get a win, it’s been a long time coming but it feels really special.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.