Ben Rhodes outlasted the competition through three green-white-checkered attempts in Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series BrakeBest 159 at the Daytona International Speedway Road Course to take his second-straight victory to start the season. The race, which featured 10 cautions for 20 laps, is officially the longest race in NCWTS history at two hours, 44 minutes and 46 seconds.
At stretches toward the end of the crazy race, it appeared that the race would never end. Then, the race did end, bizarrely under caution with a few turns left to go as Jett Noland’s No. 44 truck stalled on the track while Rhodes held a lead over Sheldon Creed.
Creed and Rhodes had fought tooth and nail for the lead over the final Stage of the race, in fact Creed took exception with how Rhodes battled him for the win in this race.
“Yeah, I was actually not very happy with that. I felt I passed him for the lead really cleanly and left him room and gave him respect and he just drove into me into [turn] one on the restart. I don’t know. I’ll remember that down the road when we’re racing hard again and he might get the other end of that deal.”
That assessment from Creed didn’t sit too well with Rhodes.
“Yeah, I’m going to choose my words carefully for Sheldon, because I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that because the guy did try to run me, on the straightaway, off the racetrack,” Rhodes responded. “So, I don’t know exactly what he means by that. We’re all slipping and sliding out of control into turn one. I mean two times down the chute between three and four, he tried to run me off the track. And he did it in five and six.”
Rhodes finished his statement by saying Creed could get over it.
John Hunter Nemechek, who ran his No. 4 truck out of gas earlier in the race and lost a lap, rallied for a third-place finish.
Todd Gilliland finished fourth after starting 32nd and Riley Herbst finished a solid fifth driving for David Gilliland Racing in the No. 17 truck.
Matt Crafton, Derek Kraus, Kaz Grala, Timmy Hill and Christian Eckes finished off the top-10 in the running order.
Just 15 of the 40 trucks in the field escaped the race without an incident — at least from what was shown on the FS1 broadcast.
For all of the post-race results, standings and stats, view our race information page:
Race Information: NASCAR Camping World Truck Series BrakeBest Brake Pads 159 at Daytona RC
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