It was a nail biter at the end in the WinStar World Casino 350k, much closer than Kevin Harvick had expected.
But in the end, the owner-driver won the race and wrapped up the owner’s championship, saying “there’s no better way to go out than winning races.”
It was the fourth win of the season for Harvick, and the 13th of his career in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series.
While Whitt faltered on the restart – his Turn One Racing entry out of fuel – Harvick and Dillon raced side-by-side off into the first turn on the 1.5-mile track. By the time they returned to the start/finish line to take the white flag, Harvick had the lead all to himself.
His winning margin at the line was 0.294 second over Dillon, while Ty Dillon, Nelson Piquet Jr., and Matt Crafton completed the top five. Scene Daily
Long before Harvick collected his 13th victory in the series, NASCAR parked Kyle Busch for the rest of the race after a Lap 14 incident that started with Busch and Hornaday racing hard side-by-side and ended with Busch knocking Hornaday into the Turn 4 wall and out of the series championship battle.
Hornaday slid up into Busch as the drivers approached the slower truck of Johnny Chapman, and after the contact, Busch and Hornaday scraped the outside wall. Busch pursued Hornaday into Turn 4 and turned him hard into the outside wall.
“This is just stupid,” Hornaday fumed after the wreck. “He knew what I was going for. He knew I was there. He had to lift, too. If I’d have lifted, I would have hit the back of that slower truck and it would have caused a big wreck.
“He just drove me in the fence and ruined a pretty good race car.”
Busch was unapologetic.
“If you consider that Ron was in the championship, maybe Ron could have played it a little bit smarter on [Lap 14] and checked up a little bit and given room to everybody around,” Busch said. “Obviously, if you make it a three-wide situation, I can’t go up in the dirt.
“I’m already on the outside lane. There’s not three lanes out there right now. ... If I just lay over and give up everything for Ron Hornaday, that’s not Kyle Busch’s fashion. I’m out here to win the race as much as anybody else is. When he races up on my inside, gets loose and takes me up to the fence, I ended up losing my cool.
“I’ve been wrecked four weeks in a row, and finally I just had enough of it. I’m sorry it was Ron Hornaday. He’s going for a championship, but the fact of the matter is you can’t place all the blame on one person. There was two people that got into it to begin with, and there was two people that ended it.” NASCAR.com
Busch could be facing additional penalties from NASCAR, including a chance of being parked for Saturday’s Nationwide event and Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race. Busch is one of the 12 drivers in the championship Chase field. He is presently 57 points behind leader Carl Edwards.
Dillon now holds a 20-point lead over Johnny Sauter, who finished seventh. If Dillon finishes 16th or better in the November 18 season-finale at Homestead, FL, he will clinch the championship, regardless of any other driver’s performance. Fox News
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