Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Erik Jones looked to headed off to victory lane. However, a caution would fly with two laps to go when Daniel Hemric bounced off of the wall. The result would be a green-white-checkered, setting up a final battle between Jones and Kasey Kahne. The pair would battle side-by-side over the next two laps, door handle to door handle, with Kahne edging Jones by 0.005 seconds at the line to score the victory.
For Kahne, it marks his fifth truck series victory. For Chevrolet, it marks their 200th victory as a manufacture in the truck series.
“Jones was really fast,” Kahne said. “He was kind of in a league of his own when he could get to clean air. I knew if we could stay back and stay with him (on the final restart), as long as he didn’t get to clean air, it would be all right. “I was able to side-draft, and it worked out perfect to get back to the line.”
For JR Motorsports, it marks their first career Camping World Truck Series victory in the team’s second start as Cole Custer debuted the truck earlier this year at Martinsville Speedway. He raced Matt Crafton late for the victory, but went around with a couple laps to go.
“This is Cole Custer’s truck and he does a great job when he drives it,” Kahne emphasized. “He can’t run the big trucks so they let me run today. I don’t know if they’ll let me run more, but Cole has a good team here. They’re just preparing to make a full-time run next year.”
Both Kahne and Jones had to start the race at the rear as Jones missed the driver’s meeting, while Kahne changed the right front shock following qualifying. They had qualified on the front row, though. Notably, Kahne’s truck was found illegal in post-race inspection as both sides were too low while the right rear was too high.
For Jones, this marks the second straight race where a victory has slipped out of his hands in the final laps as last weekend at Kansas Speedway, he dominated only to lose out in fuel mileage in the final 10 laps.
“I can’t believe that the lap cars can’t let us finish the race,” he commented. “It sucks that it has to come down to a green white checkered and the fastest truck loses the race, again. I just can’t believe we lost it. I don’t know what to say. It really hurts.”
Jones added that it feels awesome to have fast trucks, but he wishes that they could seal the deal and win.
Matt Crafton would finish third to retain the points lead, 16 points ahead of Jones.
“It was good, but it wasn’t the best truck here,” he commented. “The best truck finished second. All in all, not a bad night and it could be a lot worse.”
Tyler Reddick kept up his solid consistency, finishing fourth despite getting into the wall early in the race.
“Well, we had a really truck,” he said. “Brad Keselowski racing brought a fast truck to Charlotte and we never got a chance to get it to full speed. Just got in the wall early, took the right side off of it really good and it just hurt us. it made us tight all night and we just fought that the rest of the night. It’s a shame.”
Brad Keselowski rounded out the top-five, saying that he fought ill-handling conditions throughout the night to go with a bad pit stop that put him back deep in the field early in the race
“Finally, it just took off at the end,” he said. “I thought I might had a shot at it, but just needed a couple more laps to run up there with Kasey and Erik. I would’ve liked to be up there with them racing for a win. All in all, a decent day. Not the day that we wanted but something to be proud of.”
John Wes Townley finished sixth to crack the top-five in points, followed by Timothy Peters, Matt Tifft, Justin Boston and Spencer Gallagher. Boston came across the line sideways with a slide through the grass to go along with the slide in qualifying.
