Zane Smith emerged victorious in Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. While the race began as a decently calm affair, things got a bit nuts in the end as massive crash after massive crash ensued in the closing laps.
Smith, who utilized an incredible push from Parker Kligerman to make the race-winning pass on Christian Eckes, was competing in his first race with Front Row Motorsports after running the past two years with GMS Racing.
“Something else. Man, this place is it’s own. I’ll tell you that,” Smith explained of taking the win on Friday night. “Literally my heart hurt after that red flag, because I thought we had it. But man, just hats off to this whole group. They’ve really put the work in and it’s so damn cool to see when it pays off.”
Smith was pumped, rightfully so, about the win. The 22-year old predicts his best-career season is coming ahead in 2022.
“This is going to be a really fun year,” Smith stated. “I’m going to try to make it a career year for myself. How cool is it to get Love’s back in victory lane. I think we need to run this scheme more often.”
As the No. 38 truck got to the front, one last crash broke out involving Jason White, Carson Hocevar and Kris Wright. The crash came after the white flag, which brought an end to the race.
It seemed, initially that Eckes held on to finish second, but timing and scoring was later corrected and Ben Rhodes was awarded the second-place finish. Meanwhile Eckes, Tanner Gray and Parker Kligerman rounded out the top-five finishers in the hectic finish to the race.
Jesse Little, in his first race with Young’s Motorsports, was in sixth at the checkered flag, while Ty Majeski, Danny Bohn, Carson Hocevar and Matt DiBenedetto polished off the top-10 finishers.
For Majeski, the race’s polesitter, he led 21 laps on the night, second only to John Hunter Nemechek’s 50, but he was lucky to make it to the finish inside the top-10 after all of the chaos.
The race was turned on it’s head when a 20-truck melee was triggered just feet shy of Smith capturing the white flag.
Video: Nemechek, Ankrum, Others Involved in 20-Truck Pileup Coming to White Flag at Daytona
This sent the race into overtime, and upon NASCAR review, Christian Eckes was the leader at the time of caution. Smith tightened the belts and rose to the occasion with one final chance at victory after the shove from Kligerman.
