Christian Eckes had a great race truck all night long, started on the pole, finished fifth and fourth in both stages and led 57 laps. But he was accidentally taken out by Stewart Friesen on the last lap of the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series while Eckes was running third.
When the melee finally ended at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway settled, Eckes did not hit anything but wound up with a disappointing 14th place finish after having such a strong truck.
“I’m really not sure what happened exactly, but probably just got turned again for the second year in a row by Stewart (Friesen),” Eckes described to MRN Radio in his post race interview. “It’s unfortunate. Had a really fast Sirius XM Tundra tonight. I made a mistake, kind of lost to second there, but we had a really fast truck and that’s all you could really ask for.”
Friesen apologized for the late race incident with Eckes.
“We had a good (Chevy) Silverado,” Friesen said in his post-race interview. “Got to apologize to that 51 or whoever is in that thing, I guess it’s Eckes. Drove down in there, tried to cross up. Hard racing, I feel bad for turning him around, I wasn’t trying to do that. Good hard racing, I know he’s from Middletown, New York. If he ever wants to come run a Modified, we’ll gladly bring one for him to repay the favor there. He’s a good hard racer.”
Friesen finished third in the overall results, while finishing second in Stage 1 and eighth in Stage 2. He sits second in the points standings, 54 points behind current championship leader Grant Enfinger.
