–Courtesy Toyota Racing–
Toyota Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS)
Kansas Speedway
Race 4 of 23 – 250.5 miles, 167 laps
Friday, May 12, 2017
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, KYLE BUSCH
2nd, Johnny Sauter*
3rd, John Hunter Nemechek*
4th, CHRISTOPHER BELL
5th, Chase Briscoe*
6th, RYAN TRUEX
7th, BRETT MOFFITT
11th, GRANT ENFINGER
13th, TIMOTHY PETERS
16th, MATT CRAFTON
23rd, BEN RHODES
26th, CODY COUGHLIN
28th, NOAH GRAGSON
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA DRIVER POINT STANDINGS**
1st, Johnny Sauter* 189 points
2nd, CHRISTOPHER BELL 187 points
3rd, MATT CRAFTON 145 points
5th, TIMOTHY PETERS 134 points
7th, BEN RHODES 129 points
8th, GRANT ENFINGER 117 points
9th, BRETT MOFFITT 107 points
12th, RYAN TRUEX 98 points
13th, NOAH GRAGSON 79 points
14th, CODY COUGHLIN 76 points
*non-Toyota driver
**unofficial point standings
- Toyota Tundra driver Kyle Busch captured his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) victory of 2017 in Fridaynight’s Toyota Tundra 250.
- Busch won all three stages at Kansas Speedway after starting from the 10th starting position and led 91 laps (of 167).
- Tundra drivers Christopher Bell (fourth), Ryan Truex (sixth) and Brett Moffitt (seventh) also finished in the top 10.
TOYOTA QUOTES
KYLE BUSCH, No. 51 Cessna Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports
Finishing Position: 1st
Talk about your win here tonight.
“Thanks, you know this was a great win for us, but really it’s a terrible loss for Ben Rhodes. He had this race won. I was trying everything I could to catch him and run him back down. I could gain a little bit on him and then I’d lose a little bit on him and just kind of went back and forth a little bit. That’s a Rowdy Manufacturing chassis and a KBM body on the 27 (Ben Rhodes) truck so we knew it was going to be tough to beat and it was fast and he was one of the guys we had to race with all night long. He did a phenomenal job. It’s a tough one to lose that way, I know, because I’ve lost them that way as well. But for him to be racing against us and to be doing an awesome job, man, he raced me clean. He did a great job. He got by me. No issues there with lapped traffic and stuff like that. He did a really good race, so it was fun. It’s cool to see young guys like that have great opportunities and to be fast and to make the most of it. It was a battle there, but this Cessna Tundra prevailed and we got to victory lane ourselves. Great job by (crew chief) Bono Manion, everyone on this No. 51 team. This Cessna truck was fast and can’t say enough about NOS Energy Drink, Rowdy Manufacturing, Incredible Bank, all of our partners at KBM.”
Describe the emotions running in second after leading most of the race and thinking another win might have gotten away from you.
“No, that’s a fact. You’re right, I didn’t think about that. It was going to be another one to get away from this. I don’t know what I needed to do and try to get to the luck bank somewhere and buy some, but I can’t find any. Maybe it’s here at Kansas, who knows. We did the same thing here a couple years, winning the truck race. We won the Cup race last year, so feel like we got a good handle on this place at least when the lights turn on. Really looking forward to tomorrow. Our M&M’s Camry has been fast. I screwed up trying to get too much and going for the pole and lost it there so – man it’s just a lot of mistakes. Little ones here or there. My part, maybe a pit crew guy, maybe Adam (Stevens, crew chief), whoever it may be, we just got to put all the pieces together. It’s such a fickle business, man. We know how hard these things are to win, so glad to get one tonight.”
Did you learn anything about the track tonight that you can use for tomorrow?
“Yeah, no doubt. From where we practiced yesterday and kind of the sun in the morning session – or early afternoon session – to when the lights turned on tonight, you know our truck was really good. It was really fast. The things that we did overnight was really a positive for us, but the way the track kind of came to us, really like running here at night. It kind of just feeds me a little bit, I think. You know that might be trouble for the rest of them tomorrow.”
There were quite a few cautions at the beginning of the race, what were the issues? Something with the track or guys getting loose?
“I think the biggest thing that happens is that when we practiced yesterday during the day a lot of guys – you fight tight with cycles. When you go out and run some laps and come in and make an adjustment and go back out, you feel like the truck is tighter even though you maybe be freeing it up. But you can never get it free enough as you continue to go through cycles so everybody keeps loosening up their trucks and then they go out there and put themselves in traffic and they’re just wrecking loose – they’re just way too loose. We all have our ways of being able to know how to set up our trucks and to know to expect that, so our group collectively, I feel like we do a really good job of making sure that we try not to have those issues. We got Noah Gragson. He did that kind of at Atlanta. He kept saying that he’s too tight and they kept freeing him up through practice and then in the race he spun out lap 1. We just got to get them acclimated to our system more. They had a tough night tonight, I’m not sure what happened with them yet, but that’s what I anticipated happened for everyone.”
KEVIN “BONO” MANION, No. 51 crew chief, Kyle Busch Motorsports
What did you say to Ben Rhodes after the race?
“I generally am not a big – I always just feel like I’m doing my job, so I like to celebrate a different way than people, so I go back to the truck generally – collect my thoughts, put my radio away so it doesn’t get damaged and I happened to go by Ben (Rhodes) and Eddie (Troconis, crew chief) and I just said ‘man you guys had a great truck. Good job. You’ll get one.’ That’s it.”
CHRISTOPHER BELL, No. 4 SiriusXM Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports
Finishing Position: 4th
I don’t know. We weren’t quite good enough as soon as Kyle (Busch) got around us there at the beginning of the race. We just kind of were stalled there. We couldn’t make enough speed there to get back by him. Obviously we kind of got caught behind the eight ball there with pit strategy whenever we tried to short pit. We still got back up to fourth which is kind of where we had been running. We were definitely better than the trucks in front of us, but we just weren’t quite where we needed to be.
RYAN TRUEX, No. 16 SeaWatch Toyota Tundra, Hattori Racing Enterprises
Finishing Position: 6th
How did your race go tonight?
“It was good. It was really good. I feel like we have finally gotten where we deserved to run where we ran. We could’ve finished top five. We were just a little too tight on that last run. We had about a fifth to seventh place truck, so we finished right around where we should have. Restarts were just huge. This Gibbs engine and this body and everything these guys have done to make this truck fast – it makes my job so much easier on restarts. I can actually make things happen on restarts. We made a few mistakes. I made a big mistake on pit road and stalled it. Luckily the truck was fast enough. The restarts played in our favor.”
BEN RHODES, No. 27 Safelite Auto Glass Toyota Tundra, Thorsport Racing
Finishing Position: 23rd
What happened out there to take you out of the race?
“We ran with the best tonight. Our Safelite Tundra had speed all night long. We did everything right, but Ben Rhodes has a curse on his back or something because something always goes wrong. A piece of debris went through the grille and into the radiator and blew up the motor, so it’s just tough. We ran with the best of the best. I was learning from Busch all night long. He’s got more wins than I have in total stock car starts. It’s just crazy because something always goes wrong with our team. We do everything right, we just can never pull one off.”