Kyle Busch scored his 59th-career NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series victory Saturday in the Vankor 350 at Texas Motor Speedway, pending inspection of course.
Busch had a sizable lead coming into the closing laps, but a crash involving Todd Gilliland on lap 151 caused a late race caution which gave Christian Eckes a shot at contending for his first-career win.
Eckes would have a great restart and would hold his own for a couple of laps, but then, Busch would pull away for the win.
“What can you say about Christian?” Busch said of his young driver. “He’s getting better each and every week.”
This is Busch’s fifth-career Truck Series win at Texas, and it comes in his final Truck Series start of the year.
Busch crossed the finish line first earlier in the day at TMS in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race, but he was stripped of that victory after his car failed post-race inspection.
“I don’t know, technically, I haven’t won yet,” Busch said when asked about the inspection failure from earlier in the day. “So, put it over the sticks.”
For Eckes, he was proud that he was able to compete with Busch for the win down the stretch, but he feels he still has room for improvement if he wants to record that first-career win.
“I have a little bit of work to do overall, but we battled hard and it was really fun to go toe-to-toe with the best,” Eckes explained. “Gotta be a little bit better to beat him. I thought our truck was good enough to beat him, but I gotta improve on a few things.”
Behind Busch and Eckes was Matt Crafton, who came into the day just outside the Playoff cut. Stewart Friesen and Brett Moffitt finished fourth and fifth.
Tyler Ankrum, Justin Haley, Grant Enfinger, Ben Rhodes and Ross Chastain rounded out the top-10 finishers in Saturday’s Truck Race.
Post-Race Stat Pack:
