Busch stops Hornaday’s streak

Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch played the spoiler in Ron Hornaday’s run for the record books on Wednesday night, scoring his third NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victory of the season in the O’Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Looking to become only the second driver in the history of NASCAR’s three major racing series to win six races in a row, Hornaday came up two positions short, finishing third behind Busch and Matt Crafton.

Polesitter Ryan Newman finished fourth, followed by Brian Scott.

Busch, looking for his first truck series victory since his victory at Atlanta in March, stayed near the top five all night, finally pushing his way to the lead past Jason White with a three-wide pass on lap 124.

Busch held on through the next 77 laps – including two late caution flags – to win his second straight race at Bristol.

“I love this place, it’s a fun place to race," said Busch. “For some reason, I’ve really taken to the new (concrete) surface.

“We knew we were going to come here with a fast truck, we’ve been fast every time we’ve been here, but it was exciting to be able to capitalize like that tonight."

Already holding the record for the most consecutive wins in the truck series, Hornaday was looking to join seven-time Sprint Cup Champion Richard Petty as the only other driver to win six straight races.

Starting third in one of three entries for team owner Kevin Harvick, Hornaday kept his Chevrolet Silverado near the front of the field for the first quarter of the race, but missed the pit opening the first time around during the first caution flag on lap 36.

The miscue put him deep in the field on the restart and forced him to have to spend the rest of the race fighting his way back to the front.

“That’s what hurt us right there, we lost so much track position," said Hornaday. “It was my own fault, I should have been paying attention, but I was following the guy in front of me.

“I told Kevin (Harvick) a top-five would be great here. We just run into such bad luck here – we’ve run good, we’ve just run into back luck."

Despite missing out on his sixth-straight victory, Hornaday still had his eye on the big picture, with his third place finish keeping atop the points in his hunt for his fourth truck series title.

Crafton’s second-place showing allowed him to shave five points off of Hornaday’s lead, and now trails by 211 points.

“You can run third all day long but if Crafton keeps doing that he going to keep getting points on us," said Hornaday. “It was a good points day for us, so we’ll take it. We got Talladega coming up, we got Martinsville coming up. It’s been quite a ride, and we’re not done yet."

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