More heartache for Erik Jones, who started on pole
RELATED: Full race results | Updated Truck Series standings
FORT WORTH, Texas _ Matt Crafton continued his recent domination of NASCAR’s intermediate racetracks Friday night, hammering out a victory over an aggressive Daniel Suarez in the 19th annual WinStar World Casino & Resort 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Crafton, the two-time/reigning NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion, survived a pair of late-race cautions and restarts against Suarez - including the final with two laps to go - to record his eighth career victory by 0.569-seconds.
"The restarts were hairy," Crafton said in Victory Lane. "We got a pretty good start on that last one and ran side-by-side-by-side. We're happy for sure, but not satisfied."
Erik Jones started on the pole Friday night after turning a qualifying lap at 181.074 mph in qualifying earlier in the day. Crafton started second and was seriously challenged only by No. 51 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota driver Suarez, who finished second in a two-lap shootout after trading paint with the No. 88 in the late laps.
It was Crafton's third win of the season. The two-time defending series champion extended his lead in the points standings to 25 over Tyler Reddick.
John Wes Townley in the No. 05 Chevrolet , Johnny Sauter's No. 98 Toyota and Austin Theriault in the No. 29 Ford rounded out the top five.
Reddick was fastest in the first round of qualifying but wound up starting 16th in Friday’s Truck Series race. His No. 19 Brad Keselowski Racing Ford looked to have speed to challenge Crafton, but Reddick was forced to serve two pit road penalties then stalled on pit road late in the race.
Jones, who has finished second or third four times in six races, had heartbreak again as the pit crew had trouble locating a spare battery when he pitted with a voltage problem. He was a lap down when repairs were complete. Before the mechanical trouble, Jones had led 68 of the first 86 laps in the No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota.
Ten laps after the swap, Jones reported the new battery hadn't resolved the problem. He had to pit for a third battery on Lap 139 and went two laps down, finishing 15th.
Crafton won last year's event here on fuel mileage, a strategy he and crew chief Carl "Junior" Joiner mapped-out en route to victory on the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway last month. Crafton also prevailed on the 1.5-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway, a sister facility to TMS.
Crafton led a career-best 118 laps en route to victory here last June, snapping a 26-race TMS winless streak. Crafton and Joiner stretched their fuel mileage over the final 61 laps and cruised to a 13.302-second margin of victory over Justin Lofton. That comfortable MOV erased the series' previous TMS record of 11.817-seconds set by Dennis Setzer in 2004. The victory was the fifth of Crafton's career and second of 2014, marking the first time he had scored multiple wins in a season.
Friday night's start was Crafton's 29th at TMS - more than any active series driver entered in the 167-lap/250.5-mile event. For Crafton, that familiarity has bred respect.
"You don't have to reacquaint yourself with the racetrack, but this track has changed quite a bit over the years," said Crafton, driver of the No. 88 Ideal Door/Menards Toyota Tundra fielded by ThorSport Racing. "Last year in this June race, it was really, really different than what I'd seen in the past. Usually when you're here, you can run quite a few laps wide-open and I bet there wasn't a total of five laps the whole weekend wide-open. It's a lot slipperier and the racetrack is getting a lot more age on it. It's definitely changing and I think it's changing for the better."
With his earlier victories this season at AMS and Kansas Speedway, Crafton definitely is the measuring stick on 1.5-mile layouts. He entered the night with an 11-point lead (257-246) over Tyler Reddick of Brad Keselowski Racing, last week's winner at Dover International Speedway, and a 14-point lead over Erik Jones, Friday night's pole-sitter and driver of the No. 4 Special Olympics World Games Toyota fielded by Kyle Busch Motorsports.