Natalie Decker probably would like to forget Friday’s race in Dover, Del., ever took place.
Competing in NASCAR’s ECOSAVE 200 in the Craftsman Truck Series on Friday, Decker finished 81 laps before bowing out of the competition.
In communicating with her team, which wanted her to come to the pit road for a pass-through penalty, Decker admitted that she didn’t “want to keep doing this.”
“You guys, I’m trying my best to hold my s–t together, but I don’t want to keep doing this,” Decker, who had received prior penalties in the race, including for a violation at the start, said.
Once the 28-year-old’s team told her that if she didn’t want to continue competing, she should come in, Decker used more expletives to express that she was trying to keep her composure.
“There’s just so many s–tty things that I could say right now,” Decker said, “and I’m just trying to keep it together, about the f–king director of the series.”
When her team said it might be worth just bringing the truck into the garage, she said she would feel like a “f–king failure” if she did so before saying she was likely going to face a suspension and felt like she was done ever competing again in the truck series.
“This series f–king sucks,” Decker said, adding that she wanted to strictly compete in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and that she was worried about facing online vitriol.
She officially finished the race in 34th, one week after coming in 36th at Watkins Glen.
Decker, who gave birth to her son, Levi, in February 2025, made her return to NASCAR last August in the O’Reilly series after over a year off.
Decker previously made history in the truck series, placing fifth in Daytona in 2020, the highest a female driver has ever placed in the circuit.
In the wake of Friday’s DNF, Decker took to Instagram to post that she’s going to continue fighting out there on the race course.
“I am not going to lie I am really disappointed in myself because after all those penalties mentally I never recovered,” she wrote in the caption of her post. “I know there is going to be a lot of hate around my last to weekends racing and nothing you can say is worse then how hard I am on myself right now. But I am going to push myself to get through this and control what I can control moving forward and show up to my next race with a smile on my face and fire in me to keep doing what I love.”
