Busch wins fifth straight truck race
Fort Worth, TX (Sports Network) - Kyle Busch held off a hard-charging Matt Crafton in the closing laps to take Friday's WinStar World Casino 350 at Texas Motor Speedway. Busch won for the fifth time in the last five Camping World Truck Series races he's competed.
The 24-year-old driver grabbed the lead from Ron Hornaday Jr. with less than 50 laps to go when he bumped Hornaday, causing him to wiggle. Busch finished one second ahead of Crafton to claim his series-leading seventh win of the season.
"It's an accomplishment to beat [Hornaday's] team here that's for sure, and we got it done today," said Busch, who won at Bristol, Chicagoland, New Hampshire and Talladega before Texas. "I hate seeing [Crafton] finish second to me. I really wish he could get a win." Busch has now scored 60 career wins combined in all three of NASCAR's national touring series, including 18 this year.
He will attempt to win his fourth straight Nationwide Series race at Texas on Saturday, and then try to cap off the weekend with a victory in Sunday's 500-mile Sprint Cup Series event.
"I hope I didn't screw it up for tomorrow," he said. "I've never won here in the trucks, but I've won in the Nationwide races here the last three times." Crafton's second place finish compared to a third-place run for Hornaday allowed Crafton to chip only five points away from Hornaday's lead. Hornaday holds a 197-point advantage with just two races to go. Crafton started on the pole and led in the early going, but lost track position during the first round of pit stops when he had to take four tires instead of two after running over debris from Ben Stancill's wrecked truck.
"If it weren't for that first wreck and running over the debris, we would not have lost that track position, and I definitely think it could have been a little bit different," Crafton said.
Crafton has only one victory in the series, which came last year at Charlotte.
Hornaday only needs to finish 22nd or better in the final two races to win his series-record fourth championship.
"It was a great run for us, but that's not where we wanted to finish," Hornaday said.
"Kyle lifted me pretty good down the back straightaway. The bumper is bent pretty good. It's hard to race with someone who doesn't make a living at it and doesn't care about points." Todd Bodine, who won here in June, finished fourth, and Colin Braun came in fifth.
Johnny Sauter, Brian Scott, Mike Skinner, David Starr and Rick Crawford completed the top-10.
11/06 23:41:55 ET
