Second outage ends race early at Phoenix
With 27 laps to go, the lights at Phoenix International Raceway went out during the Lucas Oil 150 with Erik Jones in the lead. And that outage brought a halt to the race with Jones being declared the race winner for his third win of 2014 and his fourth career victory in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
The red flag was thrown at 11:45 p.m. ET with 126 laps of the scheduled 150 laps completed in the event. The official decision to call the race came down at 11:56 p.m. ET.
The delay was not the first one in the race. A power outage a bit before the race was scheduled to go green delayed the start of the race by just over 75 minutes as there was a power outage in the West Valley area near the track.
The green flag for the race was scheduled to drop at 8:48 p.m. ET, but the lights went out approximately 20 minutes prior to the start. The lights came back on in full around 9:48 p.m. ET and the command to start engines was given at 9:57 p.m. ET. The green flag for the race officially dropped at 10:04 p.m. ET.
At the time of the delay, the track tweeted the following:
PIR has learned there is a major power outage in the West Valley. APS has multiple crews working on it. We will update as soon as possible.
— Phoenix Raceway (@PhoenixRaceway) November 8, 2014
Just after 9:45 p.m. ET, NASCAR issued this update:
#NASCAR update: 2 substations down, crews working, trying to reset. Expect to be done. Plan is to race tonight. @PhoenixRaceway
— Kenny Bruce (@kennybruce) November 8, 2014
APS (the Arizona Public Service Co.) provides electricity for more than 1.1 million customers in 11 of Arizona’s 15 counties.
Drivers passed the time by just chatting on pit road, while some crew members were spotted tossing a football around.
Jones was last year’s winner at Phoenix and won the 21 Means 21 Pole Award for Friday’s race. It was announced on Thursday that Jones will drive full-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series next season for Kyle Busch Motorsports.
The Phoenix race was the next-to-last race of the Camping World Truck Series season with next weekend’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway serving as the season finale. Defending series champion Matt Crafton will head to Homestead holding a 25-point lead over Ryan Blaney in the championship standings.
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