Fuel mileage is important when the next gas station is miles away, or when your best career finish in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series is depending on it. Justin Boston’s ZLOOP Tundra was a top-10 truck all night at Kansas Speedway, but in the end it came down to conserving enough fuel, which Boston was able to do to claim a seventh-place finish.
Boston started the 167-lap race ninth, and remained in the top 10 the majority of the race. His Tundra was free on entry and tight off most of the race, but the KBM team made adjustments on every pit stop to work on the handling.
He restarted eighth after his last scheduled pit stop on lap 115 and settled into that position. With 20 laps to go crew chief Shannon Rursch instructed Boston to start saving fuel since they projected him to be two laps shy of making it to the finish. With 10 laps to go Rursch turned him loose to go full speed ahead to the finish.
With five laps remaining Boston’s KBM teammate Erik Jones ran out of fuel while leading the race. Jones had dominated, leading 151 laps and had a three-second lead on the field. As the laps clicked off more trucks began to sputter and Boston moved up to sixth place. Just before the white flag was displayed Boston also had to hit pit road for a splash of fuel. As luck would have it many of his competitors pitted as well, which helped him retain a seventh-place finish.
“Our day was pretty good,” Boston said. “The ZLOOP Tundra was fast and I felt, all-in-all, we had a solid day. To come out of it with a seventh-place finish was good since we ran out of fuel with a lap-and-a-half to go. We were all trying to save fuel but everyone ran out of gas. I felt like we were pretty competitive, we are definitely making gains. We’re moving in the right direction of where we need to go. There’s some stuff I have to work on still, and us as a group, but I feel like we had a solid top-10 truck. To come out of it seventh was a pretty good day.”
Matt Crafton won the race followed by Ryan Newman, Johnny Sauter, Timothy Peters and Cameron Haley rounded out the top-five finishers. Boston’s KBM teammates, Daniel Suarez finished sixth and Jones was 11th after both drivers ran out of fuel in the closing laps. The top-10 finish moved Boston up five positions in the driver championship point standings to eighth place.
KBM PR
