Hornaday dominates Memphis truck race

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Ron Hornaday dominated his second consecutive race and won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at the Memphis Motorsports Park.

Hornaday, the series points leader, won last week at Milwaukee in the same truck by leading 180 of 200 laps. He had a similar performance in the MemphisTravel.com 200 on Saturday night.

He started on the pole after a qualifying lap of 117.7 mph and led 175 of 201 laps on the ¾-mile oval.

"It’s a pretty dominant truck, for some reason," Hornaday said. "I don’t know what we’re doing to it, but we’re going to go back and copy it somehow."

A caution with five laps to go, caused when Dennis Setzer and Tayler Malsam got together, cut Hornaday’s commanding lead with a restart and a green-white-checker finish.

Brian Scott, who was running second, stayed with Hornaday through much of the first extra period lap, but Hornaday pulled away on the final sweep.

"I got a good jump on the restart," Scott said. "I got to his bumper and drove into the corner right there with him. Unfortunately, I drove a little harder, and didn’t stick quite as well (in the turn)."

Scott, who was racing for the second week with a broken right wrist, finished second, 0.65 seconds behind Hornaday. David Starr finished third and Aric Almirola was fourth.

"I wasn’t going to get beat by the one-armed bandit," Hornaday said referring to Scott’s cast on the broken wrist. "He was pretty good."

Hornaday, who turned 51 last week when he won at Milwaukee, took the Chevrolet truck to the lead immediately and held it for the first 53 laps. He relinquished the advantage at that point when T.J. Bell opted not to take tires during a yellow flag pit stop.

Once the field got back up to speed, Hornaday regained the top spot, passing Bell within a half lap. Scott would take the lead after pit stops on Lap 115, and would hold that advantage until Hornaday passed him on lap 135 and stayed ahead the rest of the way. The pass was accomplished with the help of a slower car that got in the way of Scott as Hornaday made the pass.

"Lap-down trucks plagued us the whole last part of the race," Scott said. "When we had the lead, I had no idea where they were going when I got to them.

"I might have been able to stay in front of Hornaday a while longer, but I don’t know if we could have beat him. He was awfully good."

Hornaday entered the race with a 36-point lead in the series. He extended it to 76 points over Matt Crafton, who finished fifth.

"We’re clamping down," Hornaday said. "We’re going out there and working extra hard, and we’re saving our parts. We’re just out there knowing what we have to do."