St-Joseph-de-Beauce (Quebec, Canada) – February 5, 2020 – On November 14, 2019, Raphael Lessard Racing announced the participation of the young Quebec driver in the 23 races of the 2020 NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck (NGROTS) series; at the wheel of the #4 Toyota Tundra prepared by Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM), the top team in the series. The adventure began on January 4, when Raphael Lessard moved to the United States. Since then, he has had a very busy schedule: intensive training, sessions on the Toyota Racing Development (TRD) simulator and preparatory meetings with the team. Raphael Lessard is excited to be racing at the prestigious Daytona International Speedway (Florida, USA) for the first time, on February 14.
Raphael Lessard works directly with the KBM team, and a simulator session awaited him at 8 a.m. on January 6. The session was aimed at gaining familiarity with the Toyota Tundra #4 and its suspension settings.
“We started with basic setups, before my crew chief, Mike Hillman Jr. and the team worked on various settings and on my driving on different tracks. I recorded increasingly competitive times throughout the morning”, explained Raphael Lessard. Other sessions are planned throughout the season in preparation for various races.
Then it was off to his first fitness training session in the afternoon, where he met with his new personal trainer at TRD. Together, they developed an optimized training program based on Raphael Lessard’s specific needs as an oval racer, as well as a specialized nutrition plan. Raphael Lessard firmly believes in the importance of such programs and enjoys training every day, as he has done for the past few seasons. Raphael Lessard must also study and understand race videos in order to better prepare himself for the particularities of each track, to understand race strategies and tactics that make the most of every situation.
As a full-time driver for the top team in this series, Raphael Lessard has all the talent and equipment he needs to shine throughout the season. In any case … you won’t want to miss the show!