Buescher wins the American Ethanol 225 at Chicagoland

[media-credit name=”Dan Sanger” align=”alignright” width=”256″][/media-credit]James Buescher battled back from two laps down and won Saturday nights NASCAR Camping World Truck Series American Ethanol 225 at Chicagoland Speedway.

Buescher’s truck was losing power and he had to come to the pits to replace the carburetor. The team got it done very quickly and Buescher only went down two laps to the leaders.

“I didn’t know if the carburetor was going to be a fix or not,” Buescher said. ”I was hoping it was. Luckily it was. From that point on, the goal was to get back on the lead lap and get as many spots as we could.”

Buescher and Timothy Peters were side-by-side on the final restart with two laps to go. Buescher took the lead away from Peters on the final lap and held off a charge from Brendan Gaughan for his third career win and his third win of the season.

Gaughan who led a race-high 83 laps finished second, Peters third, Matt Crafton fourth and Parker Kligerman finished fifth.

Peters started in the back after an engine change.

“It was just a testament to this whole Red Horse Racing Toyota Tundra team. We didn’t get much practice. We had to change engines and this team is strong from adversity. I’m just speechless every week on what they do for me. We started at the back and came to the front, we led a lap, man, close but no cigar.” Peters said.

Making his 200th career start in the truck series, Todd Bodine finished 18th. He is the first driver in NASCAR to reach 200 starts in all three national series.

“When I started in this sport as a driver, you never thought about getting to this point. You only thought about the next race — the future wasn’t something you thought about. Here I am after 21 years driving. My first full season in Nationwide was in ’91. To make it to this point, we all strive for excellence in whatever sport we’re in. To have longevity and to make a career out of it, and to get to this point, it’s a pretty special thing to know I’ve been able to accomplish that much. It’s not often in this world that you can get to do for a living the one thing that they love the most. I’m very fortunate in a lot of respects. I’m glad to be able to be a part of this sport.” Bodine said.

Peters leads Ty Dillon, who finished 12th, in the series standings by 23 points.