Moffitt Wins Wild Truck Series Race at Talladega

(Photo: Teresa Bennink | The Podium Finish)

LINCOLN, Ala. — 2018 CRAFTSMAN Truck Series champion Brett Moffitt returned to the series Saturday on an exciting note.

The 31-year-old from Grimes, Iowa led 22 laps, including the last one to win the Love’s RV Stops 250 at Talladega Superspeedway, his 14th victory in the series. He competed in Saturday’s antepenultimate Truck Series event in a one-off with Front Row Motorsports in the team’s No. 34 entry.

“It was a hell of a way to come back,” Moffitt said after the race. “We struggled for track position early and just tried to race smart. This Ford F-150 FR8 Auctions was super fast in the race. It drove really good. I could put it wherever I wanted and never felt like I was on edge. It was a great handling race track, great sponsors, great race team in Front Row and we executed when it counted.”

Part of the reason FRM entered a second truck was to give Zane Smith, the team’s full-time driver, a drafting partner at Talladega. But on an early pit stop, Smith suffered damage when he slammed into one of his crew members and then had mechanical issues. The crew member was uninjured. Smith is in a likely must-win situation ahead of Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“It’s just definitely such a bummer of a day, but we’ve been in must-win situations before so hopefully we can go pull that off again and go get in the final four,” Smith said. “Congrats to Brett. That’s awesome for FRM. Today was just a bummer, but the clutch got burnt out of it. A bummer deal.”

After qualifying 31st and nearly missing the show, Moffitt had to climb from the rear. He took the lead for the first time on Lap 63 and continued to mix it up with the leaders for the rest of the race.

However, he had to survive a series of crashes in the closing laps to seal the deal. After three consecutive wrecks — two of which resulted in red flags — Moffitt led for the overtime restart. He maintained the bottom lane, but coming into the tri-oval to take the white flag, Christian Eckes jumped ahead with help from Chandler Smith.

Smith pushed Eckes out too far and the two came detached. Moffitt darted high exiting Turn 2 and avoided an Eckes block to regain the lead and held off Smith and Ben Rhodes coming to the checkered flag.

Brett Moffitt leads Ben Rhodes to the finish line at Talladega. (Photo: Teresa Bennink | The Podium Finish)

“I’ve gotten a lot better superspeedway racing,” Moffitt said. “Obviously, in the Xfinity package I’ve been up front more and I’ve had more confidence. I’ve started to make more moves that are working instead of getting me sent to the back, so that was good, and just studying film. It’s that and the spotter when we come to these places and when I think it was the 19 pulled out off [Turn] 4 going through the tri-oval I tried to chase him up a little bit and then my immediate thought was watching last year’s race and how it ended.

“The driver that was leading the bottom line didn’t get back to the bottom to cover it and Ben [Rhodes] had been a great pusher all day and he was pretty committed to me and Ford did a great job executing that. I didn’t know what was going on to my right. I couldn’t see it, but the spotter, Clayton, started freaking out as soon as we crossed the line, so I figured we did what we needed to do.”

Rhodes ended up finishing runner-up. Despite the finish, he still sits five points below the playoff cutline.

“Congrats to Brett Moffitt. We worked really well together, but I wish it was me,” Rhodes explained. “We needed that to get into the Phoenix Championship 4, but either way we gave ourselves a shot today. We capitalized on everything we could and second at Talladega is really hard to do and we’ve done it two years in a row. I think that speaks volumes about ThorSport Racing, this Campers Inn Ford F-150 and I’m just glad we maximized it, we were just one spot short.”

Stewart Friesen and Greg Van Alst were involved in separate crashes that led to both getting transported to a local medical center for further treatment.

Nick Sanchez and Matt Crafton got into an altercation after the race which led to Sanchez getting bloodied in the garage. He told reporters on-site that it was a “cheap shot.” NASCAR is investigating the incident.

Stage 1 Top 10 Results

1. Nick Sanchez
2. Carson Hocevar
3. Corey Heim
4. Ty Majeski
5. Bret Holmes
6. Colby Howard
7. Parker Kligerman
8. Tanner Gray
9. David Gilliland
10. Dean Thompson

Stage 2 Top 10 Results

1. Parker Kligerman
2. Nick Sanchez
3. Carson Hocevar
4. Ty Majeski
5. Ben Rhodes
6. Tanner Gray
7. Bret Holmes
8. Taylor Gray
9. Dean Thompson
10. Corey Heim

Love’s RV Stop 250 Result

Playoff Standings (1 Race Remaining in Round of 8