Denny Hamlin on Rajah Caruth's first career win: 'It's big'

Rajah Caruth picked up a historic victory in Friday’s Victoria’s Voice Foundation 200 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, joining Wendell Scott and Bubba Wallace as the only Black drivers to win a NASCAR national series race.

Caruth led 38-of-134 laps, including the last 21, continuing his impressive start to the 2024 CRAFTSMAN Truck Series season.

Denny Hamlin, speaking on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast Monday, publicly congratulated Caruth on his win and summed up the magnitude of it.

Encouraging words from Denny Hamlin to Rajah Caruth 👍

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— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) March 4, 2024

“Absolutely great accomplishment for sure,” Hamlin said. “It’s not like he’s been in the sport a ton, you know, a really long time either. And he won it, you know, he won it outright, right? He did it. And it wasn’t some kind of trick, you know, strategy or anything like that. … And he showed speed the entire race. You know, he was up front. I saw all that.

“So, um, congratulations to him and his team and Spire [Motorsports] for winning another race. It’s just — they’re definitely on a roll and it seems this could be a big momentum boost for Rajah and could propel him to who knows where, right? I think if he can continue to continue on this trajectory, uh, you know, winning a handful of races, he could be the next level, you know, the next level soon.”

Caruth, 21, and still a senior at Winston-Salem State University, has finished inside the top-10 in each race this season. He recorded just four such finishes all of last season. Not bad for a driver who got his start in iRacing.

Rajah Caruth comments on the importance of increasing representation in NASCAR

Speaking with Matt Weaver of Sportsnaut, talked about joining the ranks of Scott and Wallace before him.

“I think honestly right, it’s authentic to my personality and how I grew up, right, but it also doesn’t necessarily define me, right?” Caruth said. “Hopefully, we continue over the years to continue to grow more representation, because we see it on our pit crews, we are starting to see it in race teams whether it be through our engineering, our PR departments, obviously at NASCAR, so hopefully, you start seeing it more through the drivers so that way that’s not the headline anymore it’s just like how good are our drivers.

“Just because you don’t see it in any other sport, right? For the most part. Naturally, that’s kind of through the origins of the sport though it’s continuing to change. I don’t really know, I think again it’s authentic to me, it’s part of my heritage and I’m proud of it but also, it’s not like a whole personality trait of myself.”