NASCAR driver’s career hits bump in the road
A young Calgary man’s NASCAR dream has taken a slight detour after an up and down season resulted in a lack of funding.
But Cameron Hayley, 20, is determined to get back behind the wheel.
“Since I was two or three and going to Race City, I’ve devoted my life to being a professional race car driver. I’m not going to throw away 17 years because of a setback.”
Racing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series on the ThorSport Racing team, Hayley had some good success with three second-place finishes. But he also had a run of bad luck with flat tires, mechanical failures and getting hit by other drivers.
“When nothing like that happened, we ran really well. But that was the year in a nutshell for me.”
Pro racing is an extremely expensive sport. Hayley estimates it cost $3 million to run a full camp- ing truck series and that cost is borne partly by the driver and his sponsors and partly by the race team. He wouldn’t divulge exactly how much a driver needs to bring in sponsorship to any given team, but it’s substantial.
He does have some family funding from his father’s business, Cabinets by Hayley, and his granddad’s firm, Hayley Industrial Electronics. Last year he also had partial sponsorship from Ride TV but he’s now actively searching for other sponsorship. He has a pretty impressive resume to offer prospective financiers.
He began racing go-karts at Calgary Cart Racing Club at seven and moved onto full-sized race cars by 13. At 15, Hayley was the youngest driver to race in NASCAR’S K&N Pro Series, a regional development circuit. He then moved into NASCAR’S Next Program for rising talent and signed on with ThorSport Racing in 2015.
His rookie season on the Camping World Truck Series had mixed results but he ended up sixth in the championship point standings, with four top-five and 13 top-10 finishes. He returned to the circuit in 2016 with ThorSport and raced to a career-best finish in second place at the Atlanta Motor Speedway in late February. In 18 starts in 2016, Hayley led 21 laps en route to five top-five and nine top-10 finishes. He’s the top finishing Canadian in NASCAR.
With such success last year, Hayley had plans to move up to race in a higher tier with an eye to eventually making it to the Monster Energy Cup series in four or five years. A lot of young drivers use the Camping Truck series as a springboard into the higher circuits and some go on to be leaders in NASCAR, such as Greg Biffle and Kurt and Kyle Busch.
“This was a year I was hoping to move up to the Xfinity Series. But going up to that level is also a step up in money. So I’m hoping to get my name out there, especially in Calgary a lot of people don’t know who I am.”
He hopes to change that, and in a hurry as the first race of the Camping World Truck Series was Feb. 24 at the Daytona International Speedway. It was hard to not be out on the track but Hayley is certain he’ll be back. “It’s something I’ve dreamed about as a little kid. For the last two years, I’ve been realizing my dream and it’s been amazing. I know I want to do this for the rest of my life.”