Camping World Truck Series heads to the Lone Star State

It’s a good bet that John Hunter Nemechek will be sporting a big smile when he returns to Texas Motor Speedway for Friday’s SpeedyCash.com 220 (8:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Nemechek is the defending winner of the track’s Camping World Truck Series race and won an Xfinity Series race at the Fort Worth 1.5-miler last season. He trails Truck Series championship leader and reigning series champion Ben Rhodes by 20 points in a tightly contested run for the 2022 regular-season title. RELATED: Truck Series schemes for Texas | Weekend schedule The top three drivers -- Rhodes, Nemechek and three-race winner Zane Smith are separated by only 21 points. Chandler Smith is in fourth place in the driver standings, only 29 points back from the lead. Zane Smith arrives in the Lone Star State after a dominating victory last weekend in Kansas, leading 108 of the 134 laps. Smith is the only multi-time winner in the series this year and brings a solid Texas resume to the track this weekend, featuring top-10 finishes in all three previous starts there. In fact, Rhodes, Nemechek and Zane Smith all boast top-three finishes at Texas -- Rhodes was runner-up in 2018, Nemechek won in 2021 and Zane Smith was third in 2020. With Smith’s three-win tally this season and only three other full-time drivers winning a race -- Rhodes, Nemechek and Chandler Smith -- there remain six playoff positions for championship-eligible drivers and eight races to formally set the field. And this weekend presents a challenging lineup with a handful of savvy part-time veterans set to take the green flag. Former series champion Todd Bodine -- Texas’s all-time winningest Truck Series driver (six victories) -- will be racing the No. 62 Halmar Friesen Chevrolet along with this season’s two-time NASCAR Cup Series winner, Ross Chastain (No. 41 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet) and Ryan Preece, who is 3-for-3 in top 10s driving a partial Truck Series schedule in 2022. This will be Preece's Texas Truck Series debut in the No. 17 DGR Ford. [pickup_prop id="24594"]