Dillon wins NASCAR Truck race

Before the green flag dropped, the trucks lined up four-wide for a celebratory lap to say “thank you” to the fans as
fireworks exploded overhead. The four-wide “thank you” lap is a common occurrence on smaller circuits, and the
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series thought it was worth adopting for this historic race at Eldora Speedway.
Photos courtesy of nascar.com

Eldora makes history again

By George Starks

ROSSBURG- It was 43 years ago when Richard Petty drove his #43 to victory at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in a dirt race.

Wednesday, NASCAR returned to the dirt and history was made at Eldora Speedway.

For the final 40 laps, Austin Dillon, Ryan Newman and Kyle Larson swapped paint and waged war in a three lap dash to the finish.

In the end, it was Dillon, who started 19th in the field of 30, that made the history making drive to the finish line in winning the NASCAR Camping World Truck race beating out Larson and Newman in a mad dash for the checkered flag.

The 150 lap race was broken down into three segments (60, 50 and 40 laps) as the 30 car field would be allowed to take on tires and fuel.

Dillon was more than appreciative to be back at Eldora Speedway.

“I am so happy to win this race but I really want to thank Tony Stewart for bringing this race to Eldora,” said Dillon. “I want to thank my grandpa (Richard Childress) for giving me the opportunity to race tonight. So I have a lot to be thankful for.”

In a season of ups and downs, Dillon was more than pleased with his performance.

“We’ve had an up and down season and this win tonight is awesome,” Dillon stated. “This is real racing right here. We had to come from a long way to get the lead, and then we had to maintain it. My truck was getting tight and it was all I could do to maintain it. This is just a great night for this team. We came here to win and I couldn’t be happier.”

Dillon took the lead just six laps into the third segment, getting past Larson.

At that point, it looked as if Dillon was going to cruise to the finish but three caution flags, one for a wreck and two for debris, would prove to be a thorn in the side of the youngster as Larson and Newman would be given new life.

With Larson and Newman beating and banging each other and Newman being put into the wal numerous times by Larson, the door was continually open for Dillon.

Not pleasing to a disappointed Kyle Larson.

“We had the best truck out there,” said Larson who finished second. “I just got overly excited in lap traffic and got into the back of somebody and I got out of shape. I think we had the best truck out there but couldn’t get the win and come up a little bit short.”

While Larson showed his disappointment in his second place finish, Newman had a smile on his third place finish.

Newman finished the race with no brakes on his truck.

“I had brakes but it took six pumps to get any kind of metal,” Newman stated. “My truck was really good on the long runs but we didn’t have enough there at the end.”

With Newman and Larson be teammates in the truck series, Newman had a message for his buddy anter all the swapping of paint and metal.

“I told Kyle I wanted his mailing address so I could mail him the left side of his truck,” Newman said jokingly. “We didn’t have the best truck this week but we had a lot of fun. We just didn’t have a good short run truck tonight and that’s what we needed.”