Matt The Monster: Crafton Wins At Dover

Matt Crafton won his first race of the 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series on Friday in the JACOB Companies 200 at Dover International Speedway.

It was Crafton’s 12th career victory in the Camping World Truck Series and his first win at Dover. Daniel Suarez ended up second after competing for the win in the later stages. Fellow Kyle Busch Motorsports driver Christopher Bell finished third, Johnny Sauter ended the day fourth, and Cole Custer was able to recover from a penalty for jumping a restart while leading to round out the top five in fifth.

KBM driver and last week’s winner at Kansas William Byron inherited the pole after the scheduled qualifying session was rained out earlier in the day. Byron led the first 80 laps before John Wes Townley stayed out and led three laps under caution. Tyler Reddick took the lead after Townley pitted with one more caution lap to go and led for 39 laps before Crafton was able to get around with just 78 total laps to go. Crafton was able to hold off a charge by Suarez in the final dozen laps to win.

“I just wanted to manage just enough and I could gap (Suarez) just enough and could run hard enough to push the right front tire off,” Crafton said. “I think everybody was a little bit tight and then you’d get to somebody and you’d be really tight. Then (the lead car)’d drive away. There were a couple times (the crew) said he was seven back and within a lap-and-a-half he was three back and I thought ‘I better go now.’”

It was a frustrating end for Suarez, who has eight top five finishes in 17 starts for KBM in the Truck Series but no victories. The Monterrey, Mexico driver said after the race in the media center that “We’re here to win races” and to expect him to close in on that first win sometime soon. It was later announced that his No. 51 Toyota was found to be too high in the left rear in post-race inspection; possible penalties could be given out on Wednesday.

There were six caution flags for 29 laps in the 200 lap race. The first was for a single car accident when Austin Wayne Self spun out in turn two on lap 44. The second was when Brandon Brown lost control of his Chevrolet just a few minutes later on lap 57. Ben Rhodes tangled with fellow rookie Rico Abreu in a turn four incident on the Brown caution’s restart. CJ Faison spun in turn four on lap 81. On lap 133, Townley tagged the wall and wrecked in turn four. Finally, there was a debris caution on lap 169 to set up the finish.

Full Results:

1^st Matt Crafton

2^nd Daniel Suarez

3^rd Christopher Bell

4^th Johnny Sauter

5^th Cole Custer

6^th Spencer Gallagher

7^th Tyler Reddick

8^th Ryan Truex

9^th Daniel Hemric

10^th Kaz Grala

11^th William Bryon

12^th Matt Tifft

13^th Ben Kennedy

14^th Timothy Peters

15^th John Hunter Nemechek

16^th Nick Drake

17^th Austin Hill

18^th Jordan Anderson

19^th Cameron Hayley

20^th Brandon Jones

21^st Tyler Young

22^nd Rico Abreu

23^rd Travis Kvapil

24^th Tommy Joe Martins

25^th CJ Faison

26^th Bobby Pierce

27^th Parker Kligerman

28^th Ben Rhodes

29^th John Wes Townley

30^th Jennifer Jo Cobb

31^st Brandon Brown

32^nd Austin Wayne Self

Camping World Truck Series Chase Grid

With Crafton’s first victory of the season, he has now joined the grid (Ordered by points):

Matt Crafton-1 win

William Byron-1 win

John Hunter Nemechek-1 win

Johnny Sauter- 1 win