The NASCAR Gander RV and Outdoors Truck Series continued their march to the Playoffs last Friday at Dover International Speedway.
Surprisingly, there is just three races left in the regular Truck Series season. It’s a little hard to believe the season is starting to wind down considering all that has happened this year with the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the year. But, NASCAR has made a solid effort by getting most of the races in and just 10 Truck Series races left in the 2020 season.
GMS Racing is currently the team to beat with rookie Zane Smith winning again for the second time this year. The team has a combined four wins with Sheldon Creed and Smith having a pair of victories. Remarkably, 2018 Truck Series champion Brett Moffitt and another rookie Tyler Ankrum, currently don’t have wins but have been close multiple times.
Even though GMS has been the talk of the garage as of late, there are other story lines that are worth mentioning following Dover.
Here are this week’s Four Takeaways.
- Johnny Sauter Has Solid Run – It’s been a dismal couple of weeks for Johnny Sauter’s No. 13 ThorSport team. An engine failure at Texas and a crash at Michigan has put the Wisconsin native in a must-win situation with three races left. A 71 point deficit is just too much to make up in over those races, so Sauter will need a victory if he wants to make the Playoffs. Nonetheless, he scored a respectable finish of sixth at one of his favorite racetracks.
- Carson Hocevar Gains Career Day – Coming into the Dover race, Hocevar’s best finish in the Truck Series was 23rd last year at Phoenix. On Friday, the Niece Motorsports driver cut that in half and earned a career-best of 12th. Not a bad outing in his fourth series start.
- Teammate Battles – A heated battle occurred between Kyle Busch Motorsports drivers on Lap 89 caused a multi-truck incident. Chandler Smith who was back in the No. 51 was underneath his teammate Christian Eckes in the No. 18 and they made contact with each other. Unfortunately for the Georgia native, Smith received the worst of the damage and as a result, he finished 20th two laps down after having a strong truck earlier in the race and leading 50 laps.
- Playoffs – The season has gone by in a hurry, but the playoffs are inching ever so closley. Currently, five drivers are locked in based on wins, but three additional drivers (Brett Moffitt, Eckes, and Ben Rhodes) are safely locked in on points if they have clean races. Where it really gets interesting is ninth to 11th. Tyler Ankrum is ninth with nine points above the cut line and Todd Gilliland is sitting in the last playoff position in 10th, four points in. Realistically, Derek Kraus would be the only driver outside the cut line that could point his way in. Kraus is sitting 11th, just four points out. Every other driver including Tanner Gray, Johnny Sauter, and Raphael Lessard are too far back to even have a chance. The only thing those three drivers could do is win, but only one driver will be the winner. One thing’s for sure, the points battle will be an interesting story to follow at the final race of the regular season.
