Matt Crafton holds off Joey Coulter for Truck Series win at Kansas

Matt Crafton held off Joey Coulter in a thrilling 25-lap green-flag run to the finish to win Saturday’s SFP 250 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway.

The victory was Crafton’s first of the season and the third of his career. In beating Coulter to the finish line by .168 seconds, Crafton became the 13th different winner in 13 races at Kansas, breaking a tie for the series record with Homestead-Miami Speedway.

With a late pass, Ryan Blaney finished third, followed by Brendan Gaughan and series leader Johnny Sauter, Crafton’s ThorSport Racing teammate.

The race was red-flagged after Lap 120 after Todd Bodine took two brutal hits in the same wreck. Driving to the inside of Bodine, Brennan Newberry got loose and his No. 14 Chevrolet knocked Bodine into the outside wall. As Bodine’s Toyota slid down the track, impact from Bryan Silas’ Ford destroyed the front clip of Bodine’s truck and launched it back into the outside wall.

Bodine escaped injury, but the wreck left just 18 trucks—half the field—rolling for a restart on Lap 126, after a stoppage of 12 minutes, 41 seconds.

Contact between teammates on Lap 34 deprived the race of one of its fastest trucks. Polesitter James Buescher’s Chevrolet got loose during a restart and tapped the Chevy of his Turner Scott Motorsports teammate Miguel Paludo as the drivers battled for the lead.

Paludo crashed hard into the frontstretch wall and took his crippled truck to the garage.

“It’s OK—I know he didn’t mean to get into me,” Paludo said after exiting his truck. “It’s unfortunate, because we were having a great run, and we really needed a good finish.”

Shortly after the halfway point, another wreck took out another contender. After a restart on Lap 88, Kyle Busch got loose in traffic and chased his truck up the banking. Ryan Blaney passed Busch without incident, but the same wasn’t true of German Quiroga.

As Quiroga pulled to the inside of Busch’s Toyota, Quiroga lost control, and in trying to correct he spun Busch’s Tundra into the outside wall, ending the race for the No. 51 KBM team.