Rookie Cole Whitt took the pole for the Too Tough To Tame 200 with a new track record, followed by Kasey Kahne, Johnny Sauter, Matt Crafton and Austin Dillon.
Chad McCumbee, Chris Fontaine and Chris Lafferty were the trucks that did not make the field.
“Turn 1 racing just brought this awesome truck, I want to keep this red bull truck at the front and keep it there. These guys built an awesome truck….We’ve come back a long ways since missing the race at Daytona. I’m proud of this team.” – Cole Whitt, pole sitter
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[/media-credit]Crafton leads Clay Rogers by 1 point in the points standings, followed by Witt and Sauter
“Charlotte was special, but Darlington would be bigger. So much history here, so hard to win, it’d be awesome to win here.” – Matt Crafton
Cole Whitt leads the field to the green
Caution lap 1 Paludo, Papis and Kravil all spin as people slow in front
Restart on lap 4
Lap 5 – Cole Whitt leads Kahne, Timothy Peters, Crafton and Ron Hornaday
Lap 7 – Chase Mattioli spins, no caution
Lap 14 Caution – Brad Sweet hits the wall. He had issues in qualifying as he spun on his second lap. Norm Benning gets the lucky dog.
Restart Lap 19
Lap 21 – Whitt Kahne Buescher Sauter Hornaday Crafton Sadler Peters Dillon Kligermann
Lap 25 – Whitt Kahne Buescher Hornaday Sauter Sadler Crafton Peters Dillon Bodine
Caution Lap 26 Brendan Guaghan goes for a spin
PIT STOPS
Lots of people are saying the visibility are terrible as some take two tires, some take four tires.�
Race off pit road: Sadler, Dillon, Busch, Buescher, Hornaday, Kligermann, Bodine and Peters. Leader Cole Whitt had a long pit stop as his team had lug nut issues.
Restart lap 30
Caution lap 35 Dustin Johnson plows the wall after getting loose underneath Jeffrey Earnhardt.
Restart Lap 40 – Sadler leads
Lap 41 Kahne to the lead, Sadler drops back to fourth with Buescher second and Dillon third. Sadler says he got a bad start, thanks to his teammate Ron Hornaday getting up under him
Lap 50 – Kahne Buescher Sadler Bodine Hornaday Dillon Sauter Peters Whitt Carmichael
Lap 53 – Chase Mattiolli into the wall again – no caution
Lap 54 – Sauter and Peters have both passed Dillon, putting Dillon back to eighth. Dillon says the truck is tight and then loose late in the corner. Dillon only took two tires while most of the leaders took four. Sadler was the other one with two tires.
Lap 58 – Caution for debris
Restart Lap 62 Cole Whitt leads the field to the green after taking two tires
Lap 63 – Kasey Kahne takes the lead from Cole Whitt in turn 1
Lap 64 – James Buescher to the lead
Lap 69 – Pole Sitter Cole Whitt drops through the field with his two tires – now back to seventh
Lap 70 – Kahne back to the lead.
Lap 72 – Kahne Buescher Bodine Hornaday Sauter Dillon Sadler Crafton Peters and Whitt
Lap 74 Caution – Nelson Piquet Jr into the wall, Joey Coulter and Jason White wreck behind them. Looks as though Piquet had a flat tire, which caused him to get into the wall. Coulter and White looked to try to slow behind them, both getting hit from behind and then hitting near the inside wall.
“Just somebody spun out in front of us and with the sun going over the wall, it got hard to see and I just got run into from behind. I’m sure it was nobody’s fault, just a blind spot on the track. It was just starting to get fun as I was just starting to learn this place.” – Joey Coulter
David Starr gets the Lucky Dog
Restart lap 79
Lap 82 – Kahne Hornaday Bodine Buescher Sauter Dillon Crafton Sadler Peters Gaughan
Lap 87 – Pole Sitter and Rookie Cole Whitt has dropped a cylinder
Lap 88 Caution – Chase Mattoilli into the wall for the third time
Sadler first off pit road with two tires while most take four tires. Crafton had to come back down pit road as he had a loose lugnut. Johanna Long gets the lucky dog.
Restart lap 96 with Sadler leading, though Kahne gets the lead from him before the end of the lap.
Caution Lap 97 – Ricky Carmichael wrecks as Nelson Piquet Jr. and Johanna Long wreck behind him. Carmichael wrecked first and then behind him, Piquet and Long made contact, which cut both their tires. Piquet went up into the outside wall while Long plowed into Carmichael as she couldn’t steer the truck around him. There was a sevne-minute red flag to clean up the wreck.
“Yeah, I’m alright. We were fast in race trim all day long. Coming from behind, we qualified horrible – you put yourself in a hole and we never got caught up from there. Finally I think I know what I am doing and having to come from behind makes it tough.” Carmichael, who said he either got loose or someone hit him.
Max Papis gets the lucky dog
“We had a really good truck and we finally got our lap back. Our team worked hard on the truck and hopefully we can get the truck fixed for Nashville as sponsorship is low…..I think another truck hit the wall and I think I hit him as he came down a little bit.” Johanna Long
Restart 45 to go
43 to go Tayler Malsam down pit road for unscheduled stop. He was slow down the backstretch. He said on twitter that they blew the motor.
41 to go Joey Coulter brings truck back on track to make laps after earlier incident.
39 to go Cole Whitt must have fixed motor issue on pit road as he has moved his way back up to 11th. The problem he was having was the throttle stop.
33 to go Kahne leads followed by Hornaday, Bodine, Sadler and Peters
29 to go Caution for Debris as some of the leaders pit while most stay out, including leader Kasey Kahne. The record for cautions is 10, which was set in 2004 when Kahne won then.
Restart with 25 to go
24 to go Todd Bodine passes Ron Hornaday for second
22 to go Kahne Bodine Hornaday Buescher Whitt Sadler Dillon Crafton Goess and Sauter make up the top 10.
21 to go Crafton passes Dillon for seventh
19 to go Sauter passes Goess for ninth
Kahne Bodine Hornaday Buescher Whitt Crafton Sadler Dillon Sauter and Goess
17 to go Peters passes Goess for 10th. Peters took four tires under the previous caution while most of the leaders stayed out.
11 to go Crafton has passed Sadler for sixth
9 to go Kahne Bodine Hornaday Buescher Whitt Crafton Sadler Dillon Sauter and Peters
8 to go Ron Hornaday reported a bad vibration a couple of laps ago.
CAUTION 8 to go as Jeffrey Earnhardt makes contact with the outside wall – This ties the record for the most cautions in a Camping World Truck Series race at Darlington at 10. The record was set in 2004 when Kahne won.
“That’s our last chance right here. He’s got a little vibration. We’ve overcome some adversity as we had to go to the back after that wreck at the beginning. I just want to thank the guys at the shop as we’ve had to overcome a lot of adversity. We’ll take a shot at the 18 truck this start.” – Todd Bodine’s crew chief Mike Hilman Jr.
Bodine says his right front tire feels like its bouncing up the track.
“We’ll see what we got for him. The main thing is we got to get to that checkered flag…..Espically on these old tires, it’s really easy to spin the tires and that’s where the difference comes in. If you don’t spin them and he does, then you got him down there. If I don’t make any mistakes, which I’ve been known to make, then we’ll be in good shape.” – Todd Bodine
“Yeah, it just seems that helps in one and two and down the backstretch.” – Kasey Kahne on choosing the outside lane.
“We just got to get through the gears and get out there…..We’ll see what we can do as these guys at Kyle Busch Motorsports build awesome trucks.” – Kasey Kahne
Kyle Busch is watching from Cancun, Mexico while on vacation, and is watching it in Spanish, despite not being able to understand a thing.
Restart with 4 to go
3 to go Dillon falls back through the field as he gets loose, Bodine gets loose and falls back, allowing Hornaday to pass him
2 to go Kahne starts to stretch out his lead
Checkered Flag: Kasey Kahne wins the Too Tough To Tame 200. In his four truck starts, he has three wins a second place finish.
Ron Hornaday finished second, followed by Todd Bodine, Matt Crafton, and James Buescher rounding out the top five. Peters was sixth, followed by Sadler, Whitt, Sauter and Starr.
“I mean, I came into this weekend wanting to win as that was the plan. This is a tough series to win in and on the restart with Todd, he drove me all the way up to the wall and I think he got himself loose there. I want to thank Kyle Busch for letting me drive this truck and all of Kyle Busch Motorsports for working so hard on this truck. Eric Phillips was great to work with…..I will buy them vacationing time to drive this truck, again.” – Kasey Kahne
“I owe everything to Jeff Hensley and this entire team working so hard on this truck. I got into the wall in practice causing them to work harder and then got into somebody on pit road. Your brother (Elliott Sadler) spun his tires and I got into the back of him. Kahne was pretty tough; we got to figure out what he does.”
“Kasey was going to be tough and we both spun the heck out of tires. I drove into one and about wrecked. These trucks are so aerodependent as I don’t know how I didn’t wreck with that truck on my tail. Ron did what any veteran would do and legged back there. I am loving the Truck Series. We didn’t want third, second would’ve been better but we’re back.” – Todd Bodine
“We had a problem on pit road and to come from shotgun where we were with 46 to go to here is pretty good.” – Matt Crafton
Crafton leads Whitt by 6 points in the standings, followed by Peters, Rogers and Sauter.
FINISHING ORDER
1 Kasey Kahne
2 Ron Hornaday Jr.
3 Todd Bodine
4 Matt Crafton
5 James Buescher
6 Timothy Peters
7 Elliott Sadler
8 Cole Whitt
9 Johnny Sauter
10 David Starr
11 Clay Rogers
12 Shane Sieg
13 Justin Lofton
14 Parker Kligerman
15 Austin Dillon
16 Ryan Sieg
17 Travis Kvapil
18 Max Papis
19 Craig Goess
20 Jeffrey Earnhardt
21 Dusty Davis
22 T.J. Bell
23 Jamie Dick
24 Justin Marks
25 Brendan Gaughan
26 Norm Benning
27 Miguel Paludo
28 Joey Coulter
29 Tayler Malsam
30 Ricky Carmichael
31 Johanna Long
32 Nelson Piquet
33 Jason White
34 Chase Mattioli
35 Justin Johnson
36 Brad Sweet
