Harrison Burton returns to Trucks at Bristol Dirt for DGR

The last time Harrison Burton was in a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, he was wrapping up his lone full season in the division in 2019. Nearly three years later, he will once again return to a truck on 16 April. On Tuesday, David Gilliland Racing announced Burton will drive the #17 Ford F-150 with sponsorship from Hunt Brothers Pizza.

Burton is seven races into his Cup Series rookie season for Wood Brothers Racing. He currently sits nineteenth in points with a best finish of sixteenth at Las Vegas.

The Truck start at Bristol is intended to give him preparation for the Cup race there a day later. Having grown up in pavement racing, dirt is not a discipline that he is particularly familiar with. Burton made his dirt début in the Truck Series at Eldora Speedway in 2017 for Kyle Busch Motorsports, where he finished fifteenth. Another start came during the 2019 season, but he spun and placed thirty-first.

In his only full Truck schedule with KBM, a campaign that followed three years of part-time competition, he finished twelfth in points with seven top fives and eleven top tens but missed the playoffs.

Credit: David Gilliland Racing

The news comes as a surprise for many as Joey Logano, a fellow Ford driver and defending Bristol Dirt Cup winner, had also announced his plans to race in the Trucks at Bristol. DGR, being the only full-time multi-truck team that races with Ford, seemed like the expected choice for Logano, though he did not specify in his announcement which team he would race for. DGR also poked fun at the speculation with Tuesday’s news by quipping on social media, “Y’all didn’t see this one coming.”

DGR fields the #1 and #15 for Hailie Deegan and Tanner Gray, respectively, while the #17 is filled by multiple drivers including Riley Herbst, Ryan Preece, and Taylor Gray. Kevin Harvick drove the #17 at the 2021 Bristol Dirt Race.