TALLADEGA, Ala. — The goalposts kept moving for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series playoff picture Saturday afternoon at Talladega Superspeedway. Each crash, each penalty, each shuffle of position shifted the cutoff line for the Round of 6.
Brett Moffitt and Matt Crafton each spent time going the wrong direction in the Fr8Auctions 250, but both scraped by to clinch spots in the next round of the postseason. Only three drivers had secured their berths by the time the frantic final stage set sail, and the chaotic home stretch put all five remaining drivers in a Yahtzee tumbler.
When it all shook out, the bottom four were separated by just 10 points. Moffitt and Crafton could breathe easier, while Ben Rhodes and Stewart Friesen were eliminated.
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“I wasn’t comfortable at all,” said Moffitt, who entered the race with an 18-point cushion and escaped by just eight. “Every single speedway race I’ve been whether it’s Cup Series or Truck Series, I have been leading and gotten wrecked. I’ve been running in the back and have tried to be conservative and have gotten wrecked. And today, I was a middle man and got wrecked. It happens.
“That’s the stressful part about Talladega. A lot is out of your control.”
Moffitt’s Hattori Racing Enterprises No. 16 Toyota collided with the No. 12 of Tanner Thorson with two laps left in the second stage, but he continued on with moderate damage. An unscheduled stop with 15 laps left for a flat right-rear tire, cut on the sidewall, relegated him to a 17th-place finish, two laps down.
Crafton’s impact was far more severe, his ThorSport Racing No. 88 Ford gobbled up in a 10-truck stack-up that forced a red flag with 59 of the 94 laps complete. He wound up sidelined, 26th in the 32-truck field and had to sweat out the remainder of the event to learn his playoff fate. Finishes of fourth and second in the opening two stages sustained Crafton, allowing him to advance by a four-point margin.
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“Very frustrating, but it’s Talladega,” Crafton said. “What do you expect?”
Four points the other way was Rhodes, who caught a piece of the pile-up that snared Crafton, his ThorSport teammate. The 21-year-old driver soldiered on to a 16th-place result, but never could regain his lead-lap stature, ending his playoff run after one round.
“We can make excuses, but that’s not what we’re here to do,” said Rhodes, who entered Talladega with a five-point deficit. “We’re here to race and get some wins. It was just a bad day, but I think overall at the end we showed that we were still strong even with a truck that looked like it belonged on the wrecker.”