RELATED: Full race results | Chase Grid
JOLIET, Ill. -- Timothy Peters' chances for clinching the final spot in the inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Chase weren't exactly dangling by a thread, but his hopes weren't a slam dunk either.
Stuck in limbo-land for the duration of Friday night's American Ethanol e15 225 at Chicagoland Speedway, Peters finally exhaled after an eventful eighth-place finish in the Red Horse Racing No. 17 Toyota. He was greeted on pit road by relieved team owner Tom DeLoach, who congratulated his driver with a majority of sentences starting with "Whew!"
A Kyle Busch victory denied several Chase hopefuls, all of whom needed to win Friday night's regular-season finale to punch their postseason ticket. At the top of the most-likely candidates was NASCAR Next product Cameron Hayley, who made several fruitless runs at Busch and settled for third.
Peters said that crew chief Shane Huffman kept him posted about Hayley's last-ditch bid and the battle at the front of the pack. But with a chain of unfortunate events -- an uncontrolled tire penalty on pit road, a flat-tire and damage to his truck's right-rear fender -- there was little he personally could do to alter the race's outcome.
"It wasn't no need to worry about it. I mean, it really wasn't. I can't control it, just like it's starting to rain now," Peters said as the initial drops of an impending downpour started to fall. "We couldn't control that earlier. As long as we do our job, we'll do just fine."
After a rush of caution periods that included a 14-minute red flag over the final stretch, Hayley, 20, lined up in second place alongside Busch for the overtime restart. Busch held his foes at bay for the last two laps, leaving Hayley to fight with eventual runner-up Daniel Hemric for the next-highest spot on the podium.
"Obviously, you're racing against the best and I think he showed he's the best tonight," Hayley said of Busch. "If it was anybody else, I would've won that race, but he just knows how to counter every attack I put after him and that hurt me in the end."
Hemric and Peters claimed the last two spots in the eight-driver field as the highest points-earners without a regular-season victory. Hayley wound up tied for eighth place in the driver standings (before the standings were reset for the Chase) with rookie Cole Custer and Ben Kennedy, the latter of which clinched a Chase berth with his victory last month at Bristol Motor Speedway.
RELATED: Hayley reflects on coming up just short in Chase bid
Hayley tempered his Chase misfire with a post-race pep talk that showed he was ready to embrace the spoiler role in the seven-race postseason, which begins next Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
"Now we can go out and upset all these guys," Hayley said. "They're all going to go out for wins, and they need to play it safe -- we don't any more. We're just going to win, and we're going to upset those guys. We're going to win five races in a row here and make them look like they shouldn't belong. We're going for it big-time."