“I was right there with (Aric) Almirola at the end and I could see Johnny (Sauter) and (Ron) Hornaday right there too, but I just couldn’t get up there with them,” Crafton said. “Our truck was better up in the middle and higher grooves but that’s were Aric was running. We only had four laps to go after the final restart and we just didn’t have enough time to make it work on the bottom to get past him.”
Crafton spent much of the night racing among a pack of trucks that swapped positions almost continuously throughout the evening, and that hard racing saw numerous three- and even four-wide moves through the progressively banked turns.
“It was a lot of fun out there tonight. This is a great track to come to and actually race because you can go anywhere your truck takes you and make it work,” Crafton said. “We really needed to be on the high side but we could dive in down on the bottom and then slide up in front of someone and make it work. Whenever you try that you’re on pins and needles waiting for your spotter to call you clear. We didn’t have many close calls out there tonight but I know there’s a lot of rubber marks on the walls. They were racing hard and whenever you do that for that long you get some bent sheet metal, but it’s the last race of the year and you always want to close out the season with a good finish. If you tear your truck up a little at least you have a few months to get it fixed.”
Crafton ends the 2010 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season fourth in the championship standings, his third consecutive top-five result. He scored 10 top-five finishes and 20 top-ten finishes, including a season-best 16 consecutive to close the season. Following the race at Iowa Speedway in July, Crafton never finished lower the tenth and moved from ninth to fourth in the standings.
Crafton, and the rest of the top five in the NCWTS championship standings, will be honored for their achievements throughout the season at the series awards banquet at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel on Monday November 22. After a three month hiatus, the series returns to action in the 2011 season opener, the NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway on Friday February 18.
- ThorSport Racing Press Release
