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TALLADEGA, Ala. — The “Big One” hit in Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, and it had an impact as massive as the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway oval itself.
The championship race took a sharp turn when the No. 51 of Matt Tifft came down from the top line into a dense pack of trucks on Lap 92 (of 98), triggering a 10-vehicle incident that brought out the red flag for nearly 15 minutes.
It was the last and worst shot to Matt Crafton, who led 43 laps but was involved in that incident that sent him tumbling down the leaderboard.
Crafton, who trailed Erik Jones by four points entering the fred’s 250 Presented by Coca-Cola, wound up 23 points behind the Kyle Busch Motorsports driver after finishing 24th. Four races remain in the 2015 season.
Jones finished fourth. Fellow title contender Tyler Reddick (Brad Keselowski Racing) was also involved in the wreck, but he rallied for a fifth-place result and is second in the standings, 18 points behind Jones.
Two-time defending series champion Crafton was aggravated over the radio at the Talladega-style racing — “it’s the greatest (expletive) racing,” he said sarcastically – and brief in his analysis on the points battle following the race.
“I had my problems,” Crafton said. “If (Jones and Tyler Reddick ) have their problems … I’m not worried about it. We’re going to try and go win the next four and see what happens.”
Crafton was plagued by a spate of bad incidents Saturday that put his hopes for a three-peat as series champion in serious jeopardy.
First, there was the large piece of debris that affixed itself to the front of Crafton’s No. 88 Toyota, which caused the driver — in the lead at the time — to drop back in the field behind the pack, so that the air from the pack would sweep the trash off.
That was successful in freeing the debris, but being in the back presented problems on Lap 86 when Stanton Barrett got into the wall, hitting Crafton’s truck in the process. The ThorSport Racing driver was making his way up through the field before being drilled and sent into the inside wall, all of which preceded the final blow of the “Big One.”
Jones led six laps and was up front nearly the entire day after qualifying third. The 19-year-old ran 1-2 with Crafton prior to the No. 88 falling to the back to clean debris and extended his streak of consecutive top-10 finishes to 11, a run that began with his win at Iowa Speedway in June.
“Never would have thought that we could have come out of this race that far ahead,” Jones said of the points battle. “Everything from the best to the worst can happen here, and fortunately the best happened for us.”