The final lap of the Chevrolet Silverado 250 was filled with drama as Chase Elliott would wreck Ty Dillon in turn 10 to take the victory.
Going into turn nine, Elliott got himself alongside Dillon a bit as they went into 10, contact was made and resulted in Dillon on the tires.
“I hated to do that but I had to do that,” Elliott commented after the race. “Not very often do you have a truck as good as the truck we had today and have your strategy as good as ours did today. We had a couple curveballs thrown at us there but were able to escape all that and put ourselves in a good position on the restart at the end.”
It marks Elliott’s first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series win in his sixth start as he becomes the series’ youngest winner at the age of 17.
“I had the opportunity there going into 10,” Elliott added. “I thought the 3 (Dillon) was sputtering. I felt he was really close or out of gas or something and got to his right-rear quarter panel and tried to move him out of the way and put him in the fence. That’s not how I race. I think anybody that has raced me before knows that’s now how I do things.”
Dillon got credited with a 17th place finish and would have words for Elliott after the race, stating that if Elliott was at Iowa, he wouldn’t finish the race.
“Everything comes full circle,” Elliott commented. “I hope it doesn’t but I’ve learned that I’ve lost really close races, I’ve won really close races and eventually things like that come full circle.”
At the same time on the final lap, Max Papis and Mike Skeen would bump into each other back and forth for the third and fourth positions, resulting in heavy damage to both trucks and Papis finishing sixth while Skeen finished 13th. The pair of road course veterans would share a heated discussion on pit road following the competition of the race.
Then behind them, Brad Keselowski Racing teammate Ross Chastain made contact with Ryan Blaney in turn eight, resulting in Blaney going around. Chastain got credited with seventh while Blaney got 16th.
Escaping all three incidents first would be Chad Hackenbracht, scoring a second place finish in just his third Camping World Truck Series start.
“We just sorted of raced our own race and Rudy got the truck handling really good; we didn’t make a lot of changes,” the young driver commented after the race. “I couldn’t ask for much better of a race. I’ll be smiling for the next couple of days here. I’m pretty pumped.”
Miguel Paludo ran inside the top five most of the day and came home with a solid third place finish.
“Unfortunately, strategy didn’t pay off for us,” Paludo commented. “The caution didn’t come out at the right time and on the last top, I dropped from first to 14th with like 17 laps to go, clearly didn’t go like we wanted as a team. Good points day for the team and just it was exciting to be here. It was a really good race.”
Darrell Wallace Jr. finished fourth, joining his Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate Hackenbracht in the top five. The third KBM truck of Joey Coulter finished 26th after having to make a trip to the garage mid-race due to making heavy contact with the turn eight tire barrier. Ron Hornaday Jr. rounded out the top five.
As stated previous, Papis finished sixth followed by Chastain, Timothy Peters, pole sitter James Buescher and points leader Matt Crafton. Crafton now leads Buescher by 47 points.
Johnny Sauter, who was third in points coming into the weekend, suffered handling and mechanical problems throughout the day with his Toyota Tundra.
Some things never change an Elliott in victory circle and RCR pissing and moaning about it! Better learn to love it because Chase will win a lot!
Well, seems like Awesome Bill has raised himself a dirty driver. Chase Elliott…meet Kyle Busch, I am sure you both have a lot to learn er uh I mean talk about.