(Photo: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Who Won?
Kyle Busch. The Nevadan enjoyed another dominant night for his 58th Truck Series win.
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The Kyle Busch show was alive and well in Saturday’s NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoor Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway – with an early setback for added flair.
Busch was forced to run well behind the field in the opening laps, observing a drive-through penalty after his No. 51 Toyota failed pre-race inspection. The team was also docked 10 owner points.
After the race Busch chocked the failure up to a rules change and missed update at his Kyle Busch Motorsports shop.
“I guess some rules were changed over the offseason,” Busch said. “The truck we ran tonight I think ran here at Homestead last year, and they just put it off to the side knowing that I would be here in March. It’s now June, but still, it never made its way to the fab shop for some updates, some bars that needed to be cut out due to NASCAR changing the rules.
“So we missed it and came down here with that bar in there, and I guess they wanted to prove a point. We had a big penalty, bigger than probably it would have been if there was another driver in the truck. But we’ll take it and move on.“
The early penalty trapped Busch well behind the leaders for the opening 15 laps, but he came out of pit road on the lead lap and quickly rejoined the pack thanks to a competition caution after Lap 16.
When the green flag flew again Busch marched through the field. He took the lead for the first tome on Lap 39 and led 82 of the remaining 96 laps en route to another dominant victory.
In his previous two starts Busch had been challenged, running second to Chase Elliott at Charlotte Motor Speedway and finishing a distant 21st after suffering speeding penalties and enduring damage at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Those challenges were nowhere to be seen in Homestead, with a brief three-wide battle after Ross Chastain dove under him on a restart with seven laps to go serving as the only stressful moment of the final stage.
Busch quickly prevailed and drove off to another comfortable victory – his 58th in the Truck Series and 211th in NASCAR national series competition.
“You’re always concerned about tires being better and having the opportunity to out-show you, but I felt like six laps was just the right amount, any more than that and it probably would have been a different outcome,” Busch said.
“I knew the Cessna Beechcraft Toyota Tundra here was going to be awesome. Thanks to TRD and Rowdy Energy, everybody that helps us here and makes us so fast and want to say thanks to Big Machine Hand Sanitizer as well, they were on the quarter panel the last two weeks and we didn’t win and now they’re not here and we won.”
GMS Racing’s up-and-down night
Saturday proved to be a long day for Truck Series stalwarts GMS Racing, but it did end with a pair of strong runs at race’s end.
Maury Gallagher’s group got off to an expensive start when rookie Zane Smith got loose and crashed just 20 laps into the race. Smith spun hard into the outside wall, the instigator of a crash that also eliminated teammate Brett Moffitt and damaged Chase Elliott.
“I pretty much just ran out of talent, really,” Smith said of the incident, owning up to a rare mistake amid what’s otherwise been a successful rookie year.
“I was already loose from the get go, trapped behind the (No.) 18 in dirty air and I felt like I just got sucked around and was along for the ride from then on. Hate it for my teammate and all my guys, but we’ll move on to Pocono.”
Spinning on the restart! @chaseelliott gets sent around and multiple contenders get collected in the aftermath. pic.twitter.com/XuKQWRhr7V
— NASCAR Gander Trucks (@NASCAR_Trucks) June 14, 2020
Elliott continued on in the race, but spent the majority oof the event trying to make up track position while running in the back half of the top-10. The team’s other two drivers, Sheldon Creed and Tyler Ankrum, struggled to advance to the front half of the field.
Heading into the closing laps all three drivers sat outside of winning contention, but a pair of late cautions saw the team given both great and terrible twists.
The first break was a bad one, with Creed mistakenly driving into the sand barrels covering the pit attenuator after being called to pit road late.
Missed it by THAAAAAAT much … pic.twitter.com/ZO0adCQ0rV
— NASCAR Gander Trucks (@NASCAR_Trucks) June 14, 2020
Damaged barrels from the incident forced NASCAR to display the red flag for cleanup, but Creed’s No. 2 Chevrolet amazingly continued on with only nose damage to work through. The sophomore was out of winning contention, but quietly rolled to the finish in 20th.
“Obviously not the night we wanted,” he said of the result. “The truck was just so loose all night long. We finally got decent and I messed up and hit the barrels.
“Proud of my guys for working through that and getting me back out there, it was just so tight after that I couldn’t do much with it. Just had to hang on and bring it home without any more damage.”
While Creed limped to the race’s conclusion, an additional late caution with 12 to go allowed his teammates to salvage strong runs from a challenging night.
The entire field pitted under the final caution flag, but very few teams had sticker tires remaining. Two of the few with fresh rubber were Ankrum and Elliott, and the pair took advantage of the tires to make a hasty drive through the field.
Ankrum overcame a quiet night to score second as a result, claiming what amounted to a ‘best-in-class’ effort as Busch drove off up front.
“Tonight was really long,” Ankrum said. “We spent most of our time 15th to 20th. We short pitted one time to try to get off cycle on tires and that didn’t work and we just struggled with the set up all night. Those last two pit stops we hit on something and threw a spring rubber in the right rear and we took off from there.
“I’m super thankful to my guys at GMS LiUNA and Chevrolet everyone that’s helped me so much the past couple weeks. I know we needed to improve a lot and we need to improve a lot more still. I’m really excited to get to the next race.”
Elliott couldn’t match Ankrum’s recovery, but slotted just two spots behind him in fourth after a challenging night.
“We purposely saved a set of tires for late in the race, we were trying to set ourselves up with the best chance to win tonight,” he said. “We really needed that last caution to come in and take advantage of that fresh set of tires, unfortunately we just didn’t have enough time to get back up to the front at the end.”
Other Notes
- Johnny Sauter put together a quiet top-five run to keep his playoff push intact. Sauter has finished seventh or better in four of the opening five Truck Series races, but only sits seventh in the standings due to the 40th-place disqualification at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
- Matt Crafton seemed doomed to a bad night after an early flat tire dropped him off of the lead lap, but the defending champion bounced back to finish ninth and draw closer to cracking the playoff field.
- Ross Chastain has picked up where he left off with Niece Motorsports. The Floridian finished a strong third on Saturday, and his 8.4 average finish thus far sits right with his 8.6 mark from a runner-up 2019 campaign.
- For the first time in the group’s early history, Todd Gilliland and Front Row Motorsports have secured back-to-back top-10s. Gilliland’s sixth-place effort at Homestead was enough to lift him to fifth in the championship standings. That’s the highest he’s ever sat in the Truck Series championship.
- Stewart Friesen made a rare appearance inside of the top-five during the middle stages of Saturday’s race, but faded to 14th after his truck lost handling late. The Canadian has a best finish of ninth in the opening five races, a mark he bettered in 11 of the final 14 races in 2019.
- Grant Enfinger remains the only series regular to earn playoff points after five 2020 Truck Series races. The Alabamian has 11 in total, with two race wins and a lone stage victory.
- Ray Ciccarelli returned to competition after a week that saw him threaten to quit NASCAR over its decision to allow peaceful protesting during pre-race and ban the confederate flag. He finished a quiet 29th, finishing three laps off of the pace.
