Kyle Busch extends winning streak at Chicagoland
JOLIET, Ill.—What can slow down Kyle Busch? Perhaps only the checkered flag.
Busch won his second consecutive NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race and his fourth national series race in a row by dominating the EnjoyIllinois.com 225 on Friday night at Chicagoland Speedway.
Busch swept all three NASCAR national series races at Bristol Motor Speedway last weekend and continued his winning ways at Chicagoland. He led three times for 121 laps for his fourth truck series win in nine starts in 2010.
Busch now has 17 wins across the Sprint Cup (three wins), Nationwide (10) and truck series this year.
The only drama for Busch came on pit road under two separate caution flags. On Lap 81, Busch’s gasman had trouble with the second gas can, and Busch lost four spots for the restart. But he charged to the lead on Lap 98 after another caution slowed the race.
On Lap 126, Busch changed four tires on his No. 18 Toyota, with several other drivers taking two. Busch restarted sixth but passed three cars on the first green-flag lap and got the lead on Lap 131.
Busch also survived a late-race thrust from Todd Bodine, who made an inside move on Busch with six laps to go but slipped and lost ground. Busch then held off Bodine on a green-white-checkered finish after Timothy Peters blew an engine. The race went four laps beyond the scheduled 150 on the 1.5-mile track.
Bodine ended up second, with Ron Hornaday Jr. third, Johnny Sauter fourth and rookie Justin Lofton fifth. Aric Almirola, Matt Crafton, Rick Crawford, Austin Dillon and David Starr completed the top 10.
The victory was Toyota’s 75th in the truck series since 2004, when it entered NASCAR competition.
Kyle Busch has just enough fuel to win at Bristol
BRISTOL, Tenn.—In a race where the typical Bristol gremlins came out early and often, Kyle Busch managed to get his out of the way before the green flag waved.
The result was a commanding victory for Busch in Wednesday night’s O’Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
After winning the pole but being forced to start at the rear because of prerace engine repairs under impound rules, Busch moved forward in a hurry. He took the lead when Mike Skinner pitted for the first time on Lap 91 of 206 and survived a green-white-checkered finish for his third triumph of the season in his No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota.
Busch, whose only pit stop came around Lap 30, overcame a late fuel scare to win his third straight race at Bristol.
“I wasn’t 100 percent aggressive on saving fuel, but I was 92 percent,” said Busch, who led the final 116 laps. “There was concerns all around.”
Aric Almirola finished second, followed by Ron Hornaday Jr., who rallied from a spin and a lost lap. Skinner and rookie Justin Lofton completed the top five. Points leader Todd Bodine finished sixth, and his lead over Almirola took a small hit from 231 to 211 points.
The race was slowed by a record-setting 13 cautions, including eight in the first 85 laps.
That last of the accidents was the most vicious, occurring when Ken Schrader slammed hard into the right side of the spinning truck of David Starr. It brought out a red flag and forced the race to go six laps past its scheduled distance. Both drivers walked away uninjured.
“It was a pretty hard hit,” Starr said.
A more consequential incident involved Sprint Cup regular Elliott Sadler and Timothy Peters. Battling for second in the closing laps, Sadler hooked the right rear of Peters’ truck on the backstretch, sending the No. 17 Toyota into the wall and to pit road for repairs. Peters, who is third in the standings, recovered to finish eighth.
Sadler moved into second momentarily but hit the wall several laps later when the right-front tire on his Kevin Harvick Inc. Chevrolet let go on Lap 185. He finished 26th.
Rookie Austin Dillon also had a rough night, and his streak of eight straight top 10s came to an end. Dillon was involved in two accidents—one with Donny Lia on Lap 20 and another with Clay Greenfield on Lap 44—that knocked his No. 3 truck out of contention. Dillon finished 17th.
Bodine wins at Darlington, stretches points lead
DARLINGTON, S.C.—In a season where seemingly nothing can go wrong, good fortune smiled on Todd Bodine once again in Saturday night’s Camping World Truck Series Too Tough To Tame 200 at Darlington Raceway.
Bodine cruised to his second straight win and third this season in the first truck race at Darlington since 2004.
“We’ve got it going on,” Bodine said after collecting his 20th career win and stretching his series lead to 231 points over Aric Almirola, who finished ninth. “Here we are fast every week. It’s nice to be able to get in something and drive this way.”
Timothy Peters finished a distant second after starting from the pole and having the dominant truck early. Ron Hornaday Jr. came home third after leading briefly when he beat Peters off pit road under the third of nine cautions. Johnny Sauter was fourth and rookie Austin Dillon in fifth.
The difference in the race was a call by Bodine’s crew chief, Mike Hillman Jr. With Bodine running second to Dillon with 47 laps to go, Hillman elected to leave Bodine on track when Dillon pitted for tires and fuel under caution.
Dillon’s team expected the rest of the front-runners to pit one more time, but Bodine and the others never did as a late flurry of cautions allowed Bodine to stretch his fuel to the finish.
His No. 30 Toyota went the final 71 laps without stopping.
“As the cautions fell, we knew we were going to be real close,” Hillman said. “We needed about 15 laps (under caution) when we came down pit road, and we were three or four laps to the good.”
The victory came in Bodine’s second truck start at the rugged 1.366-mile oval that hosted its first NASCAR race in 1950.
“It’s incredible. It’s a great feeling to be able to win at Darlington,” said Bodine, who won a Nationwide race at Darlington in 2003.
On a night that featured plenty of spins and general mayhem, Darlington lived up to its reputation as one of the toughest tracks in NASCAR.
Brian Ickler, Mike Skinner and Ricky Carmichael were among the contenders eliminated in accidents. Carmichael took the hardest hit, slamming the Turn 4 wall head-on after being clipped in the right-rear quarter panel by the spinning truck of Mario Gosselin.
“That’s typical RC luck right there,” Carmichael said. “I just can’t do anything.”
Truck drivers cautious in return to Darlington
Fast facts
What: Too Tough To Tame 200
Where: At Darlington (S.C.) Raceway
When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET
TV: Speed, 7 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN/Sirius Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: 1.366-mile oval
Race distance: 147 laps/200.8 miles
Qualifying: Saturday, 4:15 p.m. ET
2004 winner: Kasey Kahne
2004 polesitter: Carl Edwards
Points leaders: 1. Todd Bodine, 2,188; 2. Aric Almirola, 2,014; 3. Timothy Peters, 1,956; 4. Johnny Sauter, 1,955; 5. Austin Dillon, 1,900; 6. Matt Crafton, 1,894; 7. Ron Hornaday Jr., 1,875; 8. Mike Skinner, 1,854; 9. David Starr, 1,773; 10. Jason White, 1,706.
The Camping World Truck Series returns to Darlington Raceway this weekend after a nearly six-year absence with a race that is appropriately named the Too Tough to Tame 200.
“There’s never a corner, a straightaway, not a single moment when you are under green that you can forget about the racetrack,” series points leader Todd Bodine said. “You race it every lap, and you are racing the 35 trucks around you. It takes a lot of patience, and at the same time, you’ve really got to get after it.”
The track’s unusual egg-shaped configuration and thin racing groove make it difficult for even the most accomplished drivers to navigate. The quickest way around Darlington is the longest way—next to the wall—but that increases the risk of multiple excursions into the concrete, leaving drivers with all manner of black marks, or “Darlington stripes,” on their cars or trucks.
“Darlington takes 100 percent concentration every lap,” said Aric Almirola, who finished 41st in his lone Darlington start in a Nationwide Series car in 2007. “The second you lose focus, The Lady in Black will quickly remind you why she demands so much respect. There’s a reason it has a reputation for being such a difficult track. You’re always just inches away from adding another stripe to the wall.”
Matt Crafton, who competed at Darlington when the trucks last raced there in 2004, makes no bones about the track’s difficulty—or his lack of enthusiasm about this weekend.
“I can’t wait to get it behind us,” Crafton said. “There are so many variables there, things outside of your control. It might not be in the same league as a Daytona or Talladega, but it’s close. We need to make sure we keep the right front fender on the truck and not be up scraping against the wall.”
The track was repaved in early 2008, adding another wrinkle to the mix.
“I’m really going into Darlington and treating it like a brand-new track,” said four-time and defending series champion Ron Hornaday Jr. “Even though I’ve been there before in the Cup series and Nationwide Series cars, I think driving a truck around the track is going to be really different. We are really not sure what to expect.”
Hornaday and Bodine are two of six entries for this weekend who competed in that last truck race at Darlington. No driver in Saturday night’s race has won at Darlington.
Ricky Carmichael, a 15-time American Motorcyclist Association champion now in his first full truck season, is among those set to debut at the fabled facility where NASCAR legends David Pearson, Dale Earnhardt and Cale Yarborough scored some of their most defining triumphs.
“I’ve never been to Darlington, but I’m really looking forward to hitting the track,” Carmichael said. “There’s just so much history at that place—some of the greatest names in NASCAR have won there, and there have been so many amazing finishes. I know it’s a tough track and it’s going to be a learning experience for me.”
Veteran or rookie, the learning never stops at Darlington.
Bodine breaks through at Nashville
LEBANON, Tenn.—Todd Bodine cemented his hold on the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series points standings with a dominant victory in the Nashville 200 at Nashville Superspeedway on Saturday night.
And he may be getting in the heads of his closest pursuers.
“We did it in the style of Germain Racing: Went out and just stomped on them,” said Bodine, who led 91 of the race’s 150 laps and increased his points lead to 174 over second-place Aric Almirola.
The victory was Bodine’s second of the season and first at the 1.33-mile concrete track southeast of Nashville.
After the race, all Almirola could do was shake Bodine’s hand—and his own head.
“I told Todd when I went to victory lane, ‘When it’s your year, it’s your year,’” Almirola said. “I have a flat tire and I end up knocking the fence down and ruining a race truck and finishing 30th. He has a flat tire and is able to get to pit road, stays out, and everybody else has to pit under green—and he’s like one of three trucks on the lead lap. How do you race against that?”
Bodine won his first pole of the season and led the first two laps before Timothy Peters took over. Bodine’s No. 30 Toyota slid back in the order, and he eventually pitted for a flat right-rear tire under the race’s second caution.
Bodine restarted 15th but caught a break laps later when another yellow flag flew after most of the other leaders had made green-flag stops. That put him back on top, and he eventually pulled away to a 4.16-second victory.
“That’s part of winning championships: You’ve got to have that luck, that golden horseshoe everybody talks about,” Bodine said.
But the veteran driver isn’t about to start celebrating his second truck series championship yet.
“No, not really. It can be lost,” Bodine said. “You can never count anybody out. Racing, you never know what’s going to happen. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing every week. If we take care of what we do and don’t worry about everybody else, we’ll be just fine.”
Under the yellow where Bodine got the lead back, the race saw a somewhat comical moment after Mario Gosselin and Joe Aramendia got together. After Gosselin got out of his damaged truck, he flung a piece of hose at Aramendia, who was still running under yellow.
Rookie Austin Dillon finished second, with Almirola third, Peters fourth and Johnny Sauter fifth. Sixth through 10th were Ron Hornaday Jr., Matt Crafton, Brian Ickler, Justin Lofton and Ken Schrader.
Schrader keeps on truckin’ at age 55
Ken Schrader says his days in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series are over.
Fast facts
What: Nashville 200
Where: Nashville Superspeedway; Lebanon, Tenn.
When: Saturday, 9 p.m. ET
TV: Speed, 8:30 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN/Sirius Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: 1.33-mile concrete oval
Race distance: 150 laps/200 miles
Qualifying: Saturday, 5:05 p.m. ET
2009 winner: Ron Hornaday Jr.
2009 polesitter: Timothy Peters
Points leaders: 1. Todd Bodine, 1,993; 2. Aric Almirola, 1,844; 3. Johnny Sauter, 1,800; 4. Timothy Peters, 1,791; 5. Matt Crafton, 1,748; 6. Austin Dillon, 1,730; 7. Ron Hornaday Jr., 1,725; 8. Mike Skinner, 1,724; 9. David Starr, 1,652; 10. Jason White, 1,627.
As for the Camping World Truck Series, there could be plenty more on the horizon.
Schrader, running a part-time truck schedule in 2010, is enjoying the ride in the No. 2 Chevrolet owned by Kevin and DeLana Harvick.
In fact, Schrader, a veteran of 732 Cup starts, is so charged up about his trucking duties, he’d actually consider a full season in NASCAR’s No. 3 series if the opportunity were right.
Of course, one hurdle to that might be finding the time.
Despite not having made a Cup start in almost two years, Schrader, 55, hasn’t forgotten his passion for speed.
Schrader races—sometimes as often as five or six nights a week—at dirt tracks throughout the country.
Long known for his willingness to drive anything with four wheels, Schrader clearly hasn’t changed.
“If I had the opportunity to run the full truck series (season), I’d jump on it in a heartbeat,” he said. “I know I’m going to race, and I know I’m going to race a bunch. I just don’t know where.”
Just last week, Schrader drove his dirt-track car in Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.
“Kenny’s like the consummate professional. He races two, three nights a week,” said Butch Hylton, crew chief on the No. 2 Kevin Harvick Inc. truck. “We always laugh because we look at his calendar when we’re trying to get everything scheduled and he’s like, ‘I don’t know. I’m in Macon, Ill., this weekend or I’m in Canada this weekend.’ He just races a lot. So when he comes, he can get in the truck and he can make a few laps and he can go, ‘OK, this is what I need.’ ”
Schrader says he has raced his dirt car 52 times this year and won 12 races.
“We’ve been winning a bunch,” said Schrader, who has four wins in the Cup series. “It’s just not on TV and not in front of 100,000 people.”
The next order of business for Schrader is Saturday’s truck race at Nashville Superspeedway, a 1.33-mile concrete oval in Lebanon, Tenn.
Schrader has finishes of 28th, ninth, fifth and fourth in his truck outings this year. The truck he’ll drive in the Nashville 200 is the same one that went to victory lane last weekend at Pocono Raceway with Elliott Sadler.
Could Schrader be next?
“It’d be pretty cool. That’d really be neat,” said Schrader, who scored a truck win the series’ inaugural season in 1995 but hasn’t won in 92 starts since. “We won one Truck race back in 19-0-something when the truck series initially started, but to able to win one right now, which we can in Kevin’s and DeLana’s equipment—we can definitely win one—that would be pretty cool, especially with no more of them than we run right now.”
After Nashville, Schrader will start races at Darlington, Las Vegas and Talladega.
“I haven’t been doing that much pavement racing this year so it took a little bit to get back in the hang of it, but working with Butch Hylton and everyone over at that team, that made it real easy,” he said. “I’m looking at four more races in it, and I’m really looking forward to those
Sadler enjoys emotional truck win at Pocono
LONG POND, Pa.—Elliott Sadler isn’t ready to be written off.
On Saturday at Pocono Raceway, he showed why. Pulling away on the second attempt at a green-white-checkered-flag finish, Sadler won the Pocono Mountains 125 Camping World Truck Series race from the pole, his first victory since 2004 in any of NASCAR’s top three touring series.
Unofficial Results
| Fin | Trk | Driver | Laps | Pts |
| 1 | 2 | Elliott Sadler | 55 | 195 |
| 2 | 18 | Kasey Kahne | 55 | 175 |
| 3 | 88 | Matt Crafton | 55 | 165 |
| 4 | 51 | Aric Almirola | 55 | 160 |
| 5 | 7 | Justin Lofton | 55 | 155 |
| 6 | 5 | Mike Skinner | 55 | 150 |
| 7 | 3 | Austin Dillon | 55 | 146 |
| 8 | 17 | Timothy Peters | 55 | 142 |
| 9 | 15 | Denny Hamlin | 55 | 143 |
| 10 | 23 | Jason White | 55 | 134 |
Sadler, 35, beat Kasey Kahne to the finish line by .445 seconds in a race that went five laps past its scheduled distance of 50 laps at the 2.5-mile triangular track. With his first truck series victory, Sadler is the 21st driver to win at least one race in each of NASCAR’s top three divisions. Matt Crafton finished third, followed by Aric Almirola and rookie Justin Lofton in the truck series’ first visit to Pocono.
Sadler’s win vindicated the faith of team owner Kevin Harvick and provided a welcome highlight in a two-year stretch that has seen Sadler struggle in a Sprint Cup car at Richard Petty Motorsports. Sadler announced July 9 that he will leave the No. 19 RPM Ford at the end of the season.
“It’s hard to put in words what this means to me,” said Sadler, whose last NASCAR win was Sept. 5, 2004 in a Cup car at Fontana, Calif. “To have a tough couple years like we’ve had in the Cup series, and things not go like we want to, as far as running up front, and winning races and leading laps and things like that. …
“You sit at home a lot, wondering if you’re ever going to make it back to victory lane. Are you ever going to have that situation again? Are you ever going to be in that position again? This, to me—I know it’s recent, and it’s today—but this is the biggest win in my career.
“There’s a lot of naysayers out there, and there’s a lot of people that write me off, not giving me a chance to make a comeback and be a strong presence again in this sport. To be able to come here and sit on the pole and win the race and race against people like Kasey Kahne and Denny Hamlin (who finished ninth), who I think are two of the best racecar drivers we have in our sport, means a great deal to me.”
Notes: Sadler drove Harvick’s No. 2 Chevrolet to the lead in the series owners’ standings. The No. 2 truck leads the No. 18 of Kyle Busch, driven by Kahne on Saturday, by two points. … Todd Bodine, who tops the drivers’ standings, rallied from a spin on Lap 41 to finish 12th. Bodine leaves Pocono 149 points ahead of Almirola in second.
ARCA champ Lofton struggling in rookie truck season
So splendid were the fortunes of Justin Lofton last year in the ARCA Racing Series that he doesn’t remember hardly anything going wrong.
Now a rookie in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Lofton, can’t get much of anything to go right.
Lofton, 24, a winner of six ARCA races en route to the 2009 title, is downright sick of losing in the truck series. He is 14th in points with one top 10 (a third at Dover) in 12 starts.
“It honestly has been tough, not only for me but for my crew chief and car chief and a couple other guys that I brought along with me over to Red Horse from Eddie Sharp’s (ARCA team),” Lofton said. “We were all used to almost nothing could go wrong. I think we really had one mechanical issue last year … and other than that, it was pretty much a picture-perfect season and just something that it became really comfortable and a lot of fun.
“And this year it was in a way very humbling, not that we really got in over our head or thought we were better than anyone else or anything like that. It was just (that) we kind of set our standard for ourselves, and I guess we’ve kind of been knocked from that down and kind of been shown what racing can do to you.”
Saturday’s inaugural Pocono Mountains 125 at Pocono Raceway may be a good opportunity for Lofton to turn the tide. He won one ARCA race at Pocono last year and finished second in the other. He has four starts there, making Pocono one of the few tracks in the truck series where he has as much or more experience than the majority of his competition.
“Track time—seat time—is the single most important thing in racing, and I definitely think I have an advantage over, I’d say, 75 percent of the field,” Lofton said of Pocono. “I know there’s a couple guys—(Todd) Bodine, (Mike) Skinner, (Kasey) Kahne and (Denny) Hamlin—that have a lot of track time there, but other than that, I think I might be one step ahead of it, especially having a crew chief (Mark Rette) that I raced with last year and we won together there last year.
“I think we know weather patterns, we kind of know what to expect right off the bat. If practice gets fogged out, rained out, we’re pretty confident in what we’re taking as far as the setup and what to expect during the race than I think a lot of other people are being prepared for.”
Bodine, the series points leader, is a big fan of Lofton. Bodine says many of Lofton’s problems haven’t been of his own making—such as last weekend at O’Reilly Raceway Park when a mechanical issue in the final 50 laps derailed a likely top-10 finish.
“They’ve been very competitive,” Bodine said of Lofton and the Red Horse team. “Unfortunately, they’ve had a lot of bad luck; some of it their own doing, some of it other people’s doing, getting caught up in things. I think Justin is a very capable racecar driver.
“I think for any sponsor, he’s a very good marketing tool. He’s a very good-looking boy, very well-spoken, knows how to handle himself. He’s got everything it takes.”
Lofton believes that, too. That’s why, at least publically, he’s not fearful he could lose his ride if matters don’t quickly improve.
“You really can’t put a lot of blame on me or my crew for some of these things that we’ve had happen to us. We really don’t have any of that ‘if I don’t perform, I’m out,’ ” Lofton said. “They have a tremendous amount of confidence in me, and I have a tremendous amount of confidence in them. And as long as we stay together and we keep working as a team, then we’ll come out of this and we’ll come out of this looking really, really good.”
Fast facts
What: Pocono Mountains 125
Where: Pocono Raceway; Long Pond, Pa.
When: Saturday, 1 p.m. ET
TV: Speed, 12:30 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN/SIRIUS Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: 2.5-mile triangle
Race distance: 50 laps/125 miles
Qualifying: Saturday, 10 a.m. ET
2009 winner: Inaugural race
Points leaders: 1. Todd Bodine, 1,861; 2. Aric Almirola, 1,684; 3. Johnny Sauter, 1,679; 4. Ron Hornaday Jr., 1,649; 5. Timothy Peters, 1,649; 6. Austin Dillon, 1,584; 7. Matt Crafton, 1,583; 8. Mike Skinner, 1,574; 9. David Starr, 1,528; 10. Jason White, 1,493.
Hornaday Jr. ends 22-race winless streak
CLERMONT, Ind.—The back-to-basics approach seems to work for Ron Hornaday Jr. and the No. 33 Kevin Harvick Inc. NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team.
Hornaday Jr. snapped a 22-race winless streak in the truck series Friday night, winning the AAA Insurance 200 at O’Reilly Raceway Park.
Watched by team owner Kevin Harvick, Hornaday led 129 laps and beat runner-up Kyle Busch by 2.095 seconds for his first victory since Aug. 1 of last year at Nashville Superspeedway.
Hornaday credited crew chief Ernie Cope—who rejoined the truck team while maintaining his crew chief job with the KHI Nationwide Series group—with helping turn things around.
“We couldn’t do it without Ernie Cope and all these guys on this Chevrolet,” Hornaday said. “They worked their guts out, changing the truck after last weekend. It’s just a great day. Hopefully it keeps a little bit quiet. It took Ernie to come over here and settle everybody down. The guys were getting a little anxious. We know we’ve got a winning team. We just had to prove it to them.”
What did Cope do for Hornaday?
“We just kind of went back to what we call our basic package,” Cope said. “We’ve had people come in and try to do their own thing. I know everyone wants to make an identity for themselves, but it wasn’t working. We had to make changes. We just went back to basics here with Ron and let him drive the truck, don’t try to do nothing trick. We just went to basics and let him do his job. You’re going to win a lot of races when you do that with Ron Hornaday.”
Hornaday chipped in, too, trying to change his luck to get back to the winner’s circle.
“I changed my tennis shoes, changed all my luck stuff,” Hornaday said. “I just (went) back to my basic (of) come to the racetrack and try to kick butt, and it seems to be working.”
The victory was Hornaday’s fourth at ORP in 11 starts at the 0.686-mile short track. He led 67 laps in winning the race here in 2009 and has won three of the last four at the facility.
The key moment of the race came on Lap 153, when Hornaday squirted past Busch and polesitter Timothy Peters for the lead in Turns 3 and 4. Busch was trying to pass Peters on the high side but was blocked by Peters, opening the door for Hornaday.
“That’s one the things you’ve got to remember about this place,” Busch said. “You can dive-bomb the bottom really fast and pull a slide job on somebody, and he did it so well that I was still stuck behind the 17, so I couldn’t even turn back underneath him and do it back to (Hornaday) in the next corner.”
Said Hornaday, “Timothy was kind of backing up the corners, so once I got under Kyle, I kind of pinned him back there. We never touched or anything, but that’s what you’ve got to do here at ORP.”
Busch finished second after practicing his Sprint Cup car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Matt Crafton was third, with Johnny Sauter fourth and James Buescher fifth.
Austin Dillon was sixth, with Todd Bodine seventh, Brad Sweet eighth, David Starr ninth and Peters 10th.
Bodine’s series points lead grew to 177 over Aric Almirola, who finished 31st after being involved in a Lap 96 accident with Narain Karthikeyan and Mario Gosselin.
Peters fastest in final Trucks practice
View the practice speeds for this session (PDF)
Timothy Peters, driver of the No. 17 Red Horse Racing Toyota, held the fastest single-lap time in the final Camping World Truck Series practice session at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis Friday afternoon. His Toyota ran 27 laps, clocking the fastest lap of the field on his 26th, with a 22.769-second circuit.
Matt Crafton, Johnny Satuer, Justin Lofton and Ron Hornaday Jr. rounded out the top-five fastest drivers in single-lap runs.
Brad Sweet held the fastest 10 consecutive lap average in the session, running an average speed of 103.675 mph.
Sauter leads opening Truck Series practice
View Speeds from this Practice Session (PDF)
Johnny Sauter was the fastest truck in opening Camping World Truck Series practice at O’Reilly Raceway Friday afternoon. Sauter’s No. 13 SealMaster/Curb Records Chevrolet clocked in a 23.022-second lap, averaging 107.271-mph, to claim the best one-lap speed.
Mike Skinner, Ron Hornaday Jr., Jason White and Aric Almirola rounded out the top-five quickest drivers in single-lap runs. The remaining top-ten drivers were Kyle Busch, Matt Crafton, Timothy Peters, Todd Bodine and rookie Justin Lofton.
Lofton held the best 10-lap average in the session. Lofton ran 10-consecutive laps towards the end of the session to average 103.419-mph. Ryan Sieg in the No. 93 truck held the second fastest 10-lap average, with a speed of 102.618-mph.
The Camping World Truck Series will hit the track for one more practice session at 12:45 p.m. ET. They will qualify at 5:10 p.m. ET later tonight.
Carmichael showing sizable gains in 2nd year in trucks
Ricky Carmichael endured significant growing pains last season as a rookie in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
Carmichael, a 15-time American Motorcyclist Association champion nicknamed GOAT or “Greatest Of All Time,” admittedly still doesn’t have this whole truckin’ thing completely figured out. Slowly but surely, however, his growing pains are being replaced by steady gains.
A look at Carmichael’s 2010 results vs. 2009 is enough proof he’s moving in the right direction. His season has included more top 10s (four) and top fives (one) in 11 races than he recorded in 18 starts last year.
Being in the seat full time for Turner Motorsports this season after a partial schedule with Kevin Harvick Inc. last year has been instrumental to Carmichael’s success.
“It’s been very crucial and very beneficial to be in the seat every single weekend,” said Carmichael, 30, who had two top 10s as a rookie. “For the guys who aren’t racing when the trucks aren’t racing, they’re not getting in extra seat time on me that I’m already lacking. So it definitely is a big help—there’s no doubt—and it just gets me more and more experience and gets me more and more comfortable.”
Despite competing for an organization in its first full season, Carmichael isn’t surprised by his 2010 results—which include a career-best fourth-place finish at Dover in May. Carmichael enters Friday’s AAA Insurance 200 at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis 11th in the standings after a crash last weekend at Gateway ruined a promising run.
“I knew we were going to be pretty good just with my whole program, and I knew the team that we had, so I expected to do better just with the experience alone that I had, and I’m a little more familiar with it,” said Carmichael, who debuted with Turner last November at Phoenix. “And I knew that our equipment would be really good, so I expected to do what we’re doing. I expected to be in the top 10 and at the best, inside the top five, and we’re right there.
“I’m not surprised at all. I wanted to be where we’re at in this day in the game.”
With his illustrious motorcycling career that also included 150 AMA Pro Racing wins and a victory in the prestigious Motocross of Nations, Carmichael certainly isn’t used to struggling in racing.
Based on the first 11 races of 2010, it appears his biggest struggles may be behind him in the truck series.
“I’ll never be happy until I’m winning, but it definitely has, I think, validated in some people’s mind that I can do this and that we can make it happen,” Carmichael said. “I didn’t quit motocross just to drive NASCAR. All this came at a perfect time. I was at the end of my road in motocross and I was retiring (in 2007) and at the same time got a chance to try stock-car racing. So it’s all unfolded, and if I made it, I made it. If not, there was nothing gained, nothing lost. So for me this is all a plus.
“I think this year I’ve showed everybody that I can make this happen, and I think that I’ll get better and better with seat time. And that’s what the results are showing—that the more that I’m in the seat behind the wheel, the better my results get and the more comfortable I get.”
Fast facts
What: AAA Insurance 200
Where: O’Reilly Raceway Park; Indianapolis
When: Friday, 8 p.m. ET
TV: Speed, 7:30 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN/SIRIUS Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: .686-mile oval
Race distance: 200 laps/137.2 miles
Qualifying: Friday, 5:10 p.m. ET
2009 winner: Ron Hornaday Jr.
2009 polesitter: Colin Braun
Points leaders: 1. Todd Bodine, 1,759; 2. Aric Almirola, 1,614; 3. Johnny Sauter, 1,519; 4. Timothy Peters, 1,510; 5. Mike Skinner, 1,456; 6. Ron Hornaday Jr., 1,454; 7. Austin Dillon, 1,434; 8. Matt Crafton, 1,418; 9. David Starr, 1,390; 10. Jason White, 1,369.
Multi-Truck Qualifying Procedure Planned For Inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Event At Pocono Raceway
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (July 21, 2010) – NASCAR announced today that it will revise the qualifying procedure for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series’ inaugural Pocono Mountains 125 at Pocono Raceway on Saturday, July 31, with a multi-truck session on the 2.5-mile track.
The order in which trucks will qualify for the 36 available positions will be based on their practice speeds from final practice on Friday, July 30. Times will be inverted, allowing the slowest truck in practice to be the first out in qualifying on Saturday morning, with the fastest truck going out last. Trucks will be released from pit road in approximately 25-second increments.
Two laps of qualifying will be allowed with the fastest lap counting. Once a truck comes onto pit road its respective qualifying lap is complete. No drafting will be permitted.
“The distance and uniqueness of Pocono afforded us the opportunity to implement this style of qualifying for this event,” said NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Director Wayne Auton. “SPEED is excited about the format and we believe the fans, drivers and viewing audience will embrace it, too.”
“Our anticipation for the first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race ever at Pocono has been building for quite some time, but adding multi-truck qualifying to the mix really turns it up a notch,” said SPEED President Hunter Nickell. “All of us at SPEED are looking forward to watching this unique qualifying format unfold live and delivering it to the fans.”
“It will definitely be different than what we are used to,” said Todd Bodine, a former series champion who currently leads the series standings by 101 points over Aric Almirola. “It will be quite a show I’m sure. It should be good for the fans and good for television.”
“We are thrilled to have the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series coming to Pocono Raceway for the inaugural Pocono Mountains 125,” said Brandon Igdalsky, president of Pocono Raceway. “Recently, Pocono Raceway has been the host to many firsts, and with the new qualifying format being introduced and the always exciting double-file restarts, the truck series’ first trip to Pocono is sure to be a memorable one.”
A drawing for qualifying order will be held in case inclement weather cancels the session. The field would then be set according to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series rule book.
Qualifying will be televised on SPEED at 10 a.m. on July 31 from Pocono. Tickets to the Pocono Mountains 125 are available online at www.poconoraceway.com or by calling 1-800- RACEWAY (800-722-3829)
Dillon dominates for first truck series win
NEWTON, Iowa—Rookie Austin Dillon scored his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series win Sunday, dominating the Lucas Oil 200 at Iowa Speedway.
In his 12th truck start, Dillon, 20, led 187 of 205 laps and beat Johnny Sauter to the finish line by .635 seconds.
Dillon, grandson of owner Richard Childress, gave Richard Childress Racing its first truck series victory since Sauter’s brother Jay won at Texas in October 1999.
Dillon’s dominant run was nearly spoiled by Sauter, who was able to snatch the lead on a restart on Lap 150 after a caution for Jason White’s accident in Turn 3.
“I saw sparks coming from the 23 truck (White), and I knew there was about to be a caution, and I was trying to make those last few laps in about two seconds instead of 24 seconds because I knew that Sauter was going to be tough,” Dillon said.
Dillon was able to reclaim the lead on Lap 154, but there were two more late-race restarts—including one that pushed the race beyond the scheduled 200 laps—but Sauter was unable to mount a serious challenge.
Sauter thought he had a chance to reel in Dillon on the final restart but a stumble at the line when Dillon checked up caused him to get off the throttle and broke his momentum.
“(Sauter) had beat me on a restart earlier, so I mixed up my pickup point for the green just like I did when I was dirt racing,” Dillon said. “I had a little advice from Pop Pop (Childress) on the radio coming to the green, and the experience he has definitely helped.”
It allowed Dillon to cruise to victory in the final two laps.
“I anticipated the start a little, and I looked over and I didn’t see him so I had to jump off the gas,” Sauter said. “The rule is the second-place guy can’t beat the leader to the line and I didn’t want to risk a black flag so I had to get off the gas and we were just playing defense after that.”
Matt Crafton finished third, followed by Ken Schrader and James Buescher.
The top four drivers in the standings—Todd Bodine, Aric Almirola, Ron Hornaday and Timothy Peters—all experienced trouble.
Almirola crashed hard on Lap 75 to bring out the second caution. He finished 28th and dropped 88 points behind Bodine, who finished 17th, three laps back. Hornaday sustained major damage to the front of his truck and finished 34 laps back in 24th. Despite finishing the race with his hood missing, Hornaday swapped places in the standings with Peters, who finished 27th after losing his engine on Lap 104.
Notes: Dillon is the series’ second-youngest winning driver and third-youngest winner at age 20 years, 2 months, 37 days. Kyle Busch is the youngest, winning his first truck race at 20 years, 18 days. Busch won his second race nine days later. … There were seven cautions for 42 laps. … Dillon averaged 92.967 mph. … Dillon moved up four spots in the standings to seventh. … The next race is Friday night at Gateway International Raceway outside of St. Louis.
Crafton needs repeat performance at Iowa
Matt Crafton doesn’t mince words or make excuses about his struggles in the 2010 Camping World Truck Series season.
A top-five points finisher the two previous years, Crafton has been uncharacteristically inconsistent over the season’s first nine races.
Crafton enters Sunday’s Lucas Oil 200 at Iowa Speedway a distant 10th in the standings, 345 points behind series leader Todd Bodine.
The good news for Crafton is that he ran well in last year’s inaugural truck race at Iowa, finishing sixth after starting third and leading 17 laps.
Will this weekend’s return to the .875-mile track be a turning point in Crafton’s season?
Crafton would like to think so.
“We had all the confidence in the world going into the season and we’ve had very, very fast trucks every week, but this has probably been, like I’ve said before, probably one of the worst seasons up till now I’ve had that I can ever remember in racing,” said Crafton, 34, who placed a career-best second in points last year to Ron Hornaday Jr. “Just stuff going wrong to getting involved in wrecks not my doing and actually messing up once and wrecking myself and blowing up motors, people running out of gas in front of me like at Dover. It’s just been one of those seasons. But we’ve had this three-week break going into Iowa.
“A friend of mind was joking with me earlier and said to make sure we go to the zoo, ‘so you can dump that monkey off that’s been on your back.’ So hopefully we got all that bad luck out of the way this first third of the season.”
Interestingly, all the key players from Crafton’s top-performing 2009 team remained in place this year with the exception of a new rear tire changer. Crafton’s results haven’t been on par with last season, however.
After posting a career-high 21 top 10s in 2009, Crafton has four this season. His woes can be attributed to a combination of self- or team-inflicted mistakes and tough racing luck.
The No. 88 Chevrolet, which came home a season-best fifth in the 2010 opener at Daytona, has failed to finish the last two races because of a crash at Texas and engine failure at Michigan.
“It’s been very, very frustrating,” Crafton said. “There’s been a lot of sleepless nights—we’ll put it that way. I just can’t remember that last time I ever had a season like this. There’s been one of them (poor finishes) that’s been my doing, but there’s been so many of them that haven’t been. … It’s been one thing right after another, but it would be very, very bad if we weren’t running good, if we weren’t up front when we’ve had our problems or we haven’t qualified good and didn’t have fast trucks. But that isn’t the case at all. We have had really good trucks, but we just haven’t had any finishes that show for it, really.”
In addition to his regular truck duties, Crafton will make his second career ARCA Racing Series start this weekend at Iowa.
Given his luck in 2010, Crafton figures the extra track time gained from Saturday’s ARCA race can’t hurt his truck effort.
“Getting more laps on any racetrack’s going to help you,” Crafton said. “So we’re just looking to go there and have some fun and contend for a win in both series.”
Fast facts
What: Lucas Oil 200
Where: Iowa Speedway; Newton, Iowa
When: Sunday, 2 p.m. ET
TV: Speed, 1 p.m. ET
Radio: MRN/SIRIUS Satellite Ch. 128
Track layout: .875-mile oval
Race distance: 200 laps/175 miles
Qualifying: Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET
2009 winner: Mike Skinner
2009 polesitter: Mike Skinner
Points leaders: 1. Todd Bodine, 1,443; 2. Aric Almirola, 1,388; 3. Timothy Peters, 1,270; 4. Ron Hornaday Jr., 1,273; 5. Johnny Sauter, 1,179; 6. Mike Skinner, 1,171; 7. Jason White, 1,145; 8. David Starr, 1,132; 9. Ricky Carmichael, 1,107; 10. Matt Crafton, 1,098.
