Busch wins Bristol truck race, thrilling finish

For once, fans may not complain that Kyle Busch won a truck race.

Busch won Wednesday night’s UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway over Timothy Peters who crashed attempting to pass Busch for the win on the final lap.

“Timothy just tried to through the hail mary there I guess,” Busch said in victory lane after the race.

Unlike most occasions when Busch wins in the Truck Series, he didn’t dominate the race much in part to not only his tenth place qualifying effort but also a speeding penalty on pit road early in the race.

“I hate that I did that to my guys,” Busch said about his speeding penalty on pit road forcing him to drive his way back through the field. “Just stuck in there, persevered and tried to work through that and get back to the front.”

Busch only led the race for seven of the 200 laps, but he led the one that counted; the last lap.

The win was the 33rd of Busch’s Truck Series career, his third of the 2013 season and his fourth in a truck at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Wednesday marked the first time Busch has won the truck race at Bristol since 2010, the same year he became the first driver in NASCAR history to win in the Truck Series, Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup Series on the same weekend.

“It’s always fun to give [the fans] a little razzle before the dazzle on [Saturday],” Busch said as he’s entered in each of the three races at Bristol this weekend.

Peters, who finished second, led the most laps on the night but found himself with a torn-up race-truck by night’s end.

“I hate that we tore up a good truck,” Peters, who led the race twice for 125 laps, said about the last-lap crash while racing Busch.

Busch wasn’t the only run-in the driver of the No.1 Toyota had on the night. While leading the race, Peters was pressured by second-place starter Ryan Blaney. Racing through the first turn, the two drivers made contact, sending Blaney’s truck into the outside wall.

Blaney vowed payback for Peters over his radio, but it never came about.

“That’s Bristol,” Peters said about the incident as he saw it as more of a racing situation than intentional.

Blaney, obviously, saw it much differently.

“I know he saw me coming,” Blaney, finished third, said. “He had the middle of the race track into [turn] one and drove me all the way into the fence.

“I don’t like that too much and I’ll have to remember that.”

Much like Blaney, series points-leader Matt Crafton found himself in a late-race altercation with Joey Coulter.

Despite running out of fuel on the second-to-last restart, Crafton bounced back to score a top-10 finish, keeping his streak alive in 2013 by finishing in the top-10 of each race.

“It was ten laps to the good. We had no idea…it just shut off,” Crafton said about the fuel. “Luckily we got it going before we went a lap down.”

Crafton holds a 49-point lead over defending series champion, James Buescher.

Next week Sunday the Truck Series will make their first trip to a road course since Watkins Glen in 2000 as they visit Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.

The race will be the first time NASCAR has taken the Camping World Truck Series outside of the United States since the series’ inception in 1995.

UNOH 200 Unofficial Results 

1. Kyle Busch
2. Timothy Peters
3. Ryan Blaney
4. Johnny Sauter
5. Chase Elliott
6. Ty Dillon
7. James Buescher
8. Ron Hornaday Jr.
9. Brad Keselowski
10. Matt Crafton
11. Joey Coulter
12. Jeb Burton
13. Miguel Paludo
14. Justin Lofton
15. Max Gresham
16. Brendan Gaughan
17. Caleb Holman
18. Dakoda Armstrong
19. Jake Crum
20. Ben Kennedy
21. German Quiroga
22. Matt McCall
23. David Starr
24. Tyler Young
25. Brennan Newberry
26. Ken Schrader
27. Brandon Jones
28. Darrell Wallace Jr.
29. Bryan Silas
30. John Wes Townley
31. Jeff Agnew
32. Ryan Sieg
33. Norm Benning
34. Clay Greenfield
35. Nate Montieth
36. Chris Jones