Austin Dillon won the Inaugural Mudsummer Classic for his fifth victory in 53 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races. Kyle Larson, Ryan Newman, Joey Coulter and Brendan Gaughan rounded out the top five.
“It’s amazing,” Dillon said in victory lane. “I love this dirt racing. It’s so much fun. I want to thank Tony Stewart and NASCAR for coming here and my grandpa and American Ethenol for the opportunity. This is real racing right here – that’s all I have to say. Thanks to everybody back at RCR and ECR Engines.”
Heat Races:
Kenny Schrader led the field to the first heat and led all 8 laps for the victory. He will start in the pole in the feature race. Jared Landers started on the pole in the second heat and was getting a ton of pressure from Darrell Wallace Jr. Wallace Jr tried to get the middle to work but could not and spun with 3 laps to go and the caution came out. The green came back out and Matt Crafton went to the very bottom of the track and battled Landers for the win in the heat. Landers got him with a lap to go and took the win. Timothy Peters led the field to the green flag on heat 3 and pulled away from the field to win the heat. Larson beat Jason Bowles for the spot to be locked in for the feature in a great back and forth battle. The 4th heat was won by Kenny “Herminator” Wallace when he led the field to the green and was in the top spot for all 8 laps. The 5th and final heat race was won by Jeb Burton with Newman finishing second and clinching his spot in the feature. There was a last chance race where 10 drivers completed and only 5 of them made the feature race. Before the green flag, The truck did a 4 wide salute like the sprint cars and other do at dirt tracks.
Main Feature
Schrader led the 30 trucks to the green flag at the PACKED Eldora speedway. Peters, who had barely any experience with dirt at all, was battling with Dave Blaney and Schrader for the lead on lap 13 but could not get it done. He used a slide job on Schrader on lap 14 and took the lead while Schrader fell to 3rd. Larson got to 13th to 5th in about 20 laps and took the lead on lap 38 and never looked back. He lapped 10 cars until the first segment ended or else he would have lapped the whole field!
Larson led the field to segment 2 and they were 4 wide behind him! Larson pulled away from the field but got caught up to lap traffic and Dillon caught up to him. He got caught up with the #77 and Dillon got past him. Larson said not so fast my friend and tried to get the lead back but the caution waved for debris on lap 92. They went back to green on lap 97 and Newman went three wide to take 2nd. Larson was gaining on him and over took the #34 truck on lap 102. Larson was about to take the lead over Dillon but the caution came out for the end of the second segment.
We went back to green with 40 laps to go in segment 3. Dillon led easily to the green flag while Blaney and Larson battled Blaney for second but then the caution came out for the #6 of Landers getting together with the #3 of Ty Dillon and the #98 of Johnny Sauter.
We went back to racing with 5 laps to go but that did not last long as the caution waved with 2 to go for debris coming from the truck of Larson. They tried it again and Dillon pulled away while Larson barely got passed Newman for second.
Matt Crafton leads the point standings by 48 points over Jeb Burton.
