No lights, two red flags, no problem. Not for tonight’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series winner Erik Jones. What a night it turned out to be for Jones after starting on the pole, his second pole in 17 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races. The win also brought home team owner Kyle Busch and Kyle Busch Motorsports win number 13 in the series, seven of the victories won by Busch and the third win of the season for Jones.
At first it was unclear if the race would get underway due to a power outage at the track which affected the lighting. After a delay of about 75 minutes, the lights came on and the racing began but the race ended early after another power outage on Lap 126. The outages were widespread and affected areas other than the track so NASCAR called the race early for safety reasons and decided not to run the scheduled 150 laps.
Jones dominated in his KBM Toyota, leading 114 of the 126 laps and capturing his fourth career win in the series. He also won this same race last year.
In his post-race interview Jones stated, “It’s pretty cool to pick up another win at Phoenix. It’s a great way to top off the year for me in this truck and just a good way to start off the 2015 season.” A happy Jones went on to say, “It’s just an awesome night, I feel like we had a dominate truck and could definitely have brought it home.”
The race had its share of incidents as well, particularly, in the beginning laps, including a wreck at the start of the race on the opening lap that caused an accordion affect that essentially took out John Wes Townley, German Quiroga and Justin Jennings. The race finally went green on Lap 19 but two laps later, Ben Rhodes spun and brought out the second caution. The race restarted on Lap 27 but shortly after, Spencer Gallagher and Timothy Peters made contact, Peters hit the wall and collected Jeb Burton. The result of all these accidents was that out of the first 33 laps, 28 were run under caution.
The fourth caution of the night came on Lap 39 and brought out the first red flag, after Joey Coulter’s Chevrolet blew a tire and hit the outside wall. His truck had to be taken off the track on a roll-back.
Bringing home second place was NASCAR Camping World Truck Series points leader, Matt Crafton who also started the race in second. Crafton is in the perfect position to bring home another championship if he can finish 21st or better next week at Homestead. If he does he will be the first driver to win two consecutive championships in the truck series.
Crafton also was one driver that would have liked to have seen the green flag fly again after that second red flag when the power went out again.
Crafton commented, “I would have liked to have seen this thing go all the way tonight.” He continued saying, “I know if I could have gotten track position on him we could have beat him, I truly believe it. I’m tired of finishing second to that damn 51 though.”
Third place went to Cole Custer and fourth place went to Ryan Blaney, who is second in the points. Ben Rhodes finished fifth followed by Darrell Wallace Jr. in sixth and John Hunter Nemechek in seventh place.
Austin Dillon, Johnny Sauter and Tyler Reddick finished in eighth through 10th, respectively.
The top five in the championship points standings are:
1) Matt Crafton 798
2) Ryan Blaney -25
3) Darrell Wallace Jr. -46
4) Johnny Sauter -59
5) Timothy Peters -93
The next and final race for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will be the Ford EcoBoost 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. ET.
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