Kyle Busch boots Ron Hornaday out of lead for Texas-style Truck victory
Billy Ballew Motorsports' Kyle Busch celebrates with a burnout after winning Friday night's NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – Kyle Busch booted Ron Hornaday out of the way and held off a hard-charging Matt Crafton en route to victory in Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Busch, who bumped Hornaday’s Kevin Harvick Inc. Chevrolet down the backstretch and into Turn 3, shot to the outside and completed the winning pass off Turn 4 with 50 laps to go.
Hornaday wiggled from the contact but regained control and hung on to finish third after later losing second to Crafton, his closer pursuer for the series title.
While Crafton finished ahead of Hornaday on the track, he made up just five points in the standings and trails Hornaday by 197 points with two races left.
Busch, who is running a part-time schedule for Billy Ballew Motorsports, scored his fifth victory in as many Truck starts and seventh win of the season in the WinStar World Casino 350. Busch hasn’t lost since being reunited with crew chief Richie Wauters before the race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Aug. 19.
“It’s an accomplishment to beat the 33 bunch [of Hornaday] here for sure and we got it done,” said Busch, who led twice for a race-high 54 laps and beat Crafton to the finish line by nearly a full second.
Crafton started from the pole and led the opening 19 laps before falling behind on the first pit stop. The ThorSport Racing driver had to nurse his truck over the final laps as fuel mileage became a concern.
Crafton made it to the finish but has little chance of catching Hornaday for the title; Hornaday has to finish only 22nd or better in the last two races to clinch a record-breaking fourth series crown.
“Honestly, I haven’t even looked at the points,” Crafton said. “I wanted to win tonight. That was the main thing we came here for.”
Following Busch, Crafton and Hornaday in the top five were Germain Racing’s Todd Bodine and Roush Fenway Racing’s Colin Braun.
ThorSport Racing’s Johnny Satuer, Xpress Motorsports’ Brian Scott, Randy Moss Motorsports’ Mike Skinner, HT Motorsports’ David Starr and Circle Bar Racing’s Rick Crawford completed the top 10.
The race was slowed three times, each for single-truck incidents.
That last of them occurred when DGM Racing’s Mario Gosselin spun through the frontstretch grass, setting up a round of pit stops and a subsequent restart with 54 laps to go. Hornaday restarted third and needed a little more than a lap to move past the top two trucks of Jason White and Aric Almirola, who were on a different pit strategy and older tires.
Busch followed Hornaday into second and stayed there until executing the winning pass.
“He can do whatever he wants,” Hornaday said of Busch’s move. “The rear bumper’s caved in so it wasn’t no draft. The back tires were off the ground.”
Busch defended the contact.
"I just bump-drafted him down the backstretch to speed up the process to Turn 3," Busch said. "It wasn't anything intentional to wreck him, to turn him sideways or to wreck him into Turn 3 or anything like that. He's just over-exaggerating the situation a little bit.
"He wanted to make a wreck out of it when we got to Turn 3. When I ran around the outside of him he wanted to come up the race track and dump me, but he didn't achieve his goal there."
