Kyle Busch powers to Camping World Truck Series win at Texas
Oct. 31, 2014
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
FORT
WORTH, Tex.—After an astounding run toward the front after a late
restart in Friday night’s Winstar World Casino and Resort 350 at Texas
Motor
Speedway, Kyle Busch took the checkered flag under caution at the end
of a green-white-checkered-flag run to the finish of the NASCAR Camping
World Truck Series race.
In
a wild final two laps that left ThorSport Racing teammates Jeb Burton
and Johnny Sauter at odds on pit road, Burton finished second, followed
by
Timothy Peters, polesitter Tyler Reddick and series leader Matt
Crafton.
Sauter
went spinning through the infield grass after what appeared to be
incidental contact from Burton on Lap 145 of a scheduled 147 to cause
the
caution that set up the green-white-checkered finish and sent the race
five laps beyond its posted distance.
The
victory was Busch’s seventh of the season, his third at Texas and the
42nd of his career. What made the win possible was Busch’s dramatic
surge
from ninth to third on the penultimate restart on Lap 143, after five
drivers stayed out on old tires and three others took two tires or no
tires on their final pit stops under the fifth caution.
Busch
wasn’t worried about the outcome until he realized he had miscounted
the number of trucks that would restart ahead of him on Lap 143.
“I
thought when I saw four trucks out there (that had stayed out)… I only
counted four, and then all of a sudden the 15 (Mason Mingus) popped up,
and
that made it five,” Busch said. “But when I counted four, that was
going to put us eighth on the outside, but then the 15 was there, and so
it was ninth on the inside.
“I
thought the 17 (Peters) was in the catbird seat there. I figured he had
the perfect strategy—two tires, and he was going to be on the outside
(restarting
sixth), get through those guys and get out front.”
As
it turned out, Busch drove up the middle after the restart and passed
Peters for second right before caution flew on Lap 145 for Sauter’s trip
through
the grass. As Busch would say later, his dramatic run to the front was
essentially a case of “close your eyes and hold on.”
“Driving
up through the middle there, the seas sort of parted ways a little bit,
and they were already three-wide, and I’m like, ‘There’s a gap
there—I’m
taking it.’ And that put us four-wide. But in those situations, with
that many laps to go, you’ve just got to do it.”
Crafton’s
two closest pursuers in the series standings, Ryan Blaney and Darrell
Wallace Jr., both had issues on Friday night, but Wallace got by far
the worse of the exchange, as both his engine and his championship
hopes expired in the same instant.
As
Wallace was chasing Busch, his car owner, from the second position on
Lap 106, his engine erupted in a plume of smoke and dropped a stream of
oil
on the race track. Wallace took his No. 54 Toyota to the garage and
finished 26th, falling 43 points behind Crafton with two races left in
the season.
Blaney
was forced to change batteries under caution on Lap 77 and fell to 16th
for a restart on Lap 82 but rallied to finish ninth and minimized the
damage to his position in the standings. Blaney remained second, 23
points behind Crafton.
Note:
With Busch’s victory, Toyota clinched its seventh manufacturer’s
championship in the Camping World Truck Series… Busch has now led laps
in 21
consecutive NCWTS starts.
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