FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Kyle Busch moved closer to an owner’s championship in the NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series, driving his No. 18 Toyota to another victory at Texas on Friday night.
Busch has won seven of his 14 Trucks starts this season. He has won 22 NASCAR races this year, with three Sprint Cup wins and 12 in Nationwide.
While not in contention for the driver’s title because he doesn’t run full-time in the series, Busch could win the owner’s title with his first-year team. With two races left, the Busch-owned team increased its lead in owner points over Steve Germain from 42 to 72 points.
Germain owns the No. 30 truck driven by Todd Bodine, the fourth-place finisher who has a 230-point lead over Aric Almirola in the driver’s standings. Almirola finished seventh.
Busch led 80 of 147 laps and won with an average speed of 132.367 mph at the 1½-mile, high-banked track. He finished 0.386 ahead seconds ahead of Johnny Sauter, who rebounded after running out of fuel in his Chevrolet with 55 laps left.
The victory clinched Toyota’s fifth consecutive manufacturer’s title.
It was Busch’s 23rd career trucks victory, and his 84th overall in NASCAR — he has won 19 Cup races and 42 Nationwide races. Busch won the Trucks and Nationwide races at Texas last fall.
Busch took the lead for good on the lap 127, the first after the final restart.
Before Lance Fenton spun into the wall to bring out the last of four cautions, Bodine led Busch by 3.243 seconds.
Sauter had led for 31 laps before running out of fuel on lap 92.
Only a few laps before that, Busch was complaining on the radio about a potential problem. But he stayed on track and was about to pit with everyone else in sequence while never dropping out of the top three or four spots.
Matt Crafton finished third, followed by Bodine and Elliott Sadler.
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