Rajah Caruth is not your average 21-year-old. On a normal day, he wakes up early in the morning and hits the gym, and before he can think about his classes at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, the D.C. native heads to the car shop for a different kind of study hall: learning to improve his driving before the next race.
On top of his coursework for his motor sports management major, the full-time student is also balancing life as a full-time driver for the 2024 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Driving the No. 71 Chevrolet Silverado for Spire Motorsports, Caruth sits inside the Top 10 of the driver standings.
The studying often continues at home, where he practices on a racing simulator before eating dinner and heading to bed. The days get longer on the road, where he heads straight to the airport or hits the road before a race. But the tight schedule is part of what Caruth said is needed to make his racing dreams come true.
“As a competitor, I pride myself on trying to do things fairly in the right way,” Caruth told WTOP. “And then outside of the racetrack, I know that I fortunately have the opportunity to make positive change. So that’s where my priorities lay outside of the sport as well. Just pay my dues and use my platform for things that I deem good.”
In early March, Caruth won his first NASCAR Truck Series race, the Victoria’s Voice Foundation 200 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, finishing 0.851 seconds ahead of second-place driver Tyler Ankrum.
Earlier that day, Caruth won the first Truck Series pole of his career by 0.001 seconds over Christian Eckes. The Truck Series pole award meant Caruth started the race leading the pack, which gave him the boost by the end of the night.
“That was my first NASCAR national series since when I won my regional races a couple of years ago, but it had been a little drought,” he said. “So it was nice to break through this early in the season.”
With the win, he became the third Black driver to win any NASCAR race. He accomplished the feat in only his fifth year of racing professionally, earning praise all over social media, including from legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. and fellow Black driver Bubba Wallace.
“I know that my presence, just existence, in this space is a big deal in that department,” Caruth said. “So I’m going to try. I don’t take it for granted.”
The destination is worth the drive
Caruth’s journey to motor sports was an unusual one.
He graduated from the School Without Walls High School in Northwest D.C., but had little exposure to the sport.
So what kick-started his love for racing? He credits playing video games at an early age, such as the Need for Speed series, and watching the Disney movie “Cars.”
He was soon taken to racetracks in Richmond, Virginia; Dover, Delaware; and the Poconos in Pennsylvania. His love soon turned into a focus.
He grew up playing basketball and running track. But racing was more than a hobby.
“Just to be one of the few (Black drivers) was something that I thought of when I started, but passion was the main thing for me,” he said.
Caruth made his full-time Truck Series debut in 2023 where he tallied four top-10 finishes and finished 16th in the final driver standings. He also raced part-time in the Xfinity Series in 2022 and 2023.
In 2021, he was named the Wendell Scott Trailblazer Award recipient, an award given annually to the most outstanding driver in the Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series.
The award is named after Wendell Scott, who in 1963 became the first Black driver to win a race in NASCAR’s top national series.
Still a DC kid at heart
Before graduating from NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Program, he was using a virtual simulator setup in his home on Capitol Hill. Receiving that exposure has driven him to seek more for children living in urban areas.
Motorsport is a “booming industry,” even for those with interests beyond driving. There are engineering and business opportunities within the sport, Caruth said. And he’s interesting in getting kids who don’t live near a racetrack involved.
“By getting that first exposure at such a young age, whether it be through Boys and Girls Clubs, school curriculums, or after-school programs — I think that is a way to get the youth into the sport more,” he said. “That way, it’s not foreign to them.”
Understanding his future role as a NASCAR driver, he’s still a D.C. kid at heart. He grew up using the Metro system and didn’t start driving on the road until he left the area at 17 years old. However, he does not miss the District’s notorious traffic jams whenever he returns home, especially since he’s used to driving over 100 mph.
“It’s always like an adjustment whenever I’m back and driving around in the city because … this is, like, excruciating sometimes,” Caruth joked. “It was one the few things that gets my blood pressure up.”
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