Following his last pit stop of the race, Matt Crafton came off pit road in the second spot, looking to challenge Erik Jones and Tyler Reddick for the win. However, he wouldn’t get the chance, as a pit road speeding penalty saw the defending series champion restart at the tail end of the longest line.
Like a champion, though, Crafton overcame the adversity and made his way back up through the field to finish in the fifth spot.
“Track position was everything,” he commented. “I messed up and 40.05 and sped on pit road and gave it away. I felt if we would haven’t have sped on pit road, we would have had a shot at the thing. Driver error on that. These guys never gave up all weekend and worked really hard.”
Crafton added that the speeding penalty was really frustrating due to how hard it was to pass throughout the 200 lap event.
“You try to get everything you can,” he added. “It was too fast and I hate it for these guys for me making mistakes like that. We’ll go get them in Texas.”
The top-five finish for Crafton allowed him to keep the points lead, 11 points ahead of Tyler Reddick.
