After racing locally in Idaho for a few years, 15-year-old Zach Telford will make his K&N Pro Series West debut this weekend at Meridian Speedway.
The Middleton, Idaho, native is a two-time winner at Meridian in the PitstopUSA.com Modified division, the track’s NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Division I, on his way to finishing third in the 2019 NWAAS Idaho standings while also racing at Magic Valley Speedway in Twin Falls. He also won two of five NAPA Big 5 Late Model events at Meridian.
“I‘m gonna be a little nervous I feel once we get in there and start getting ready to go,” Telford told NASCAR.com. “We‘ve been racing late models and modified and decided to do this and we‘ll go from here. Our main goal is to just finish all the laps and learn from it.”
He will be competing under the Zach Telford Racing banner, who he races for in all other divisions. But their team did not have a K&N Pro Series car in their inventory, so they called another Idaho racer who’s run in K&N.
“We got it from one of our buddies who raced the car a couple years ago, Trevor Cristiani,” he said. “It‘s his old car and we got a pretty good deal on it.”
Cristiani has one top 10 (Douglas County, 2017) in seven career starts, and qualified second at Meridian in 2017 before being involved in an accident and finishing 19th.
For his age, Telford has an impressive resume, and is looking to add to that with another first this weekend.
“I haven‘t won any championships because I‘ve been doing a bunch of classes at the same time,” he explained. “But this year I‘ve won seven races, varying from the two different classes of modified to late models.”
Rob Dixon, who worked most recently with Bill McAnally Racing, will be Telford’s crew chief for the 208-lap event.
Telford hasn’t raced against many drivers competing this weekend, but did run junior late models at Madera Speedway a couple years ago with Hailie Deegan, who won at Meridian one year ago.
RELATED: PIT BOX: K&N Pro West Starts Championship Drive At Meridian
The NAPA Auto Parts Idaho 208 is scheduled to go green this Saturday, September 28 at 8:30 PDT.
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