Mike Skinner beat Erik Darnell by 0.02 seconds to win Saturday night’s Qwik Liner Las Vegas 350 Craftsman Truck Series race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The victory was Skinner’s first of the season and the 25th of his career. His last win came 22 races ago in October 2007 at Martinsville, VA.
Darnell led when the field went green for a final green-white-checkered finish, but it was Skinner who drove his No. 5 Toyota around on the outside for the lead and the eventual win.
The race saw a record 12 cautions and there was a melee on the final lap as Skinner and Darnell raced to the checkered flag.
“Erik’s truck was awfully good,” Skinner said. “I knew I wasn’t going to wreck to win the race. I was going to push him, bounce off of him, do whatever I needed to do. But he’s a friend. He’s a class act and he has a great future in this business.
“I knew that we had the third best truck, but I knew that I had one shot and you have to make the best of these things. I tried him (Darnell) on the bottom and they lined up behind me, and I said, ‘Well, I have to fake him to the bottom and try him on the top.’”
Matt Crafton finished third, John Andretti was fourth and Ron Hornaday followed to move within a point of leader Johnny Benson in the season standings.
In addition to the photo finish in front of a crowd of 50,000, there was quite the shakeup in the series points standings as Johnny Benson saw his 74-point edge over Ron Hornaday Jr. shrink to a single digit after Benson wrecked out of the race on Lap 64 while in the lead.
“There’s no doubt that we had a fast truck — it was flawless,” said Benson, who holds a 2,858 to 2,857 advantage. “We’ll have to pick up the pieces for later. That’s outside of our control. We can’t fix that problem.”
Hornaday — who briefly took control of the points lead on one of the late restarts before relinquishing it with his fifth-place finish — said he was glad to move closer to Benson, but was disappointed it had to come because of a wreck.
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