NCWTS: Zane Smith Dominates Heart of America 200 at Kansas Speedway

After a dominating performance in Saturday’s Heart of America 200 at Kansas Speedway, Zane Smith finished the night celebrating in victory lane. Piloting the No. 38 Speedco Ford, Smith started fourth and led four times for 108 circuits en route to his third victory of the season.

“Really just an unbelievable truck. We honestly struggled there in the first stage,” said Zane Smith as fireworks flew in the sky. “That late restart scared me a little bit. Good thing I didn’t have another one there because I was stuck in fourth (gear).”

Ty Majeski took home the runner-up spot sitting 1.653 seconds behind the race winner. Making his eighth start of the season, Majeski scored his third top-five and fifth top 10 finish.

Through 54 career truck series starts, Smith leaves Kansas with his sixth career truck series victory along with his 15th top-five and 35th top 10.

The truck on track tonight was the same one that the No. 38 team took to Las Vegas Motor Speedway in early March, where they finished 36th and only completed six circuits. 

“This was our Vegas truck – I feel like this would’ve been an image of Vegas – what we’ve seen tonight if I didn’t get damaged earlier in the race there.”

Grant Enfinger rounded out the top three finishers on Saturday under the lights at Kansas. The Alabama native picked up his second top-five of the season.

Chandler Smith and Christian Eckes rounded out the top five finishers.

Pole sitter John Hunter Nemechek, Matt DiBendetto, Derek Kraus, Matt Crafton, and Ben Rhodes rounded out the top 10.

“Spun tires, didn’t get a good push from behind. It’s on me. I spun the tires and that was pretty much it,” said Nemechek. “We missed it. The 38 (Zane Smith) had the dominant truck. He should have won the race. I feel like we should have finished second or third.”

Nemechek later mentioned that he’d like to get better on restarts before the upcoming Playoff race at Kansas in the fall.

“We’ve got to work on restarts and come back,” Nemechek added. “We know what we need to do here coming back for the Playoff race. We just debriefed right there.”

The 200-mile event sat relatively quiet with just four yellow flags – two of those being for the scheduled stage breaks at laps 30 and 60. Kris Wright brought out the yellow on lap 92 while Dean Thompson drew the yellow flag on lap 123. Both drivers continued to finish 25th and 22nd.

Corey Heim had solid days going in both the ARCA Menards Series and Camping World Truck Series events at Kansas. Unfortunately for the driver of the 51 Toyota, a tire went down that forced them to pit road late into the 134-lap event. Following that pit stop, Heim had another tire go down not long after forcing them back to pit road once again. The driver finished the night 10 laps down in 33rd.

The next race for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will be at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday, May 20th. Race can be seen live on FS1 and heard on MRN Radio at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Brett Winningham
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