Bristol, TN – Kyle Busch won a Camping World Truck Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway for the fourth time with a dramatic finish in Wednesday night's UNOH 200.
After starting 10th, Busch scraped the wall in the opening laps and then received a pit-road speeding penalty during a round of stops on lap 72, which dropped him back to 25th in the field. He almost went a lap down before a caution came for an accident involving Jeff Agnew with 22 laps remaining.
Busch moved up to second following a restart with 12 laps left, but another caution came for an incident involving Brad Keselowski. After the final restart, Busch and Ryan Blaney swapped the lead for a pair of laps before Busch took the top spot for good with six laps to go.
Timothy Peters, who led 125 of 200 laps, grabbed second from Blaney and then chased down Busch for the lead.
Busch and Peters ran side-by-side during the last lap around this 0.533-mile, high-banked oval before Peters bumped into Busch and spun just prior to crossing the finish line.
Busch claimed his third win of the season and the 33rd of his Truck Series career. Peters slid across the line 0.05 seconds behind Busch and then slammed into the inside retaining wall.
"Coming to the checkered flag, I knew that I had it, because I had the momentum, but Timothy just tried to throw a Hail Mary there I guess," Busch said. "He wrecked a pretty good race truck, and I hate it for him in doing that.
"We had a great (truck) today. I messed up a little bit in qualifying and definitely got behind on pit road there with my penalty, so I hated that happening to my guys. But we just stuck in there and persevered by working through that and got back to the front."
Busch has now won 14 NASCAR national touring series races at Bristol, which is a record. He has five victories in the Sprint Cup Series and five in the Nationwide Series at this track. In August 2010, Busch won the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Truck Series races at Bristol on the same week, becoming the first driver to accomplish that feat.
He is competing in Friday's Nationwide event and Saturday's Sprint Cup race.
Peters was attempting to win a truck race at Bristol for the second straight time. One year ago, he led all 204 laps en route to victory.
"I got a good run coming off of (turn) 4, but coming to the checkered, it unloaded and got into Kyle," Peters said. "When I hit him, it went back across the frontstretch. I hate that I tore up truck, but I was going for it."
During the late-stages of the race, Blaney attempted to pass Peters for the lead, but Peters drove Blaney up the track, which caused him to make contact with the wall.
"It's just short-track racing," Peters said. "I didn't do it purposely."
Blaney ended up finishing third four days after he crashed on the opening lap and placed last in the 32-truck field at Michigan International Speedway.
"I know (Peters) saw me coming, and he entered in the middle of the racetrack going into (turn) 1 and drove me all the way up into the fence," Blaney said. "I don't like that too much, and I'll remember that."
Johnny Sauter finished fourth, while Chase Elliott, the pole sitter, took the fifth spot. Earlier in the day, Elliott, who is the 17-year-old son of former NASCAR Cup Series champion Bill Elliott, became the youngest pole winner ever in trucks. He led the first 63 laps.
Ty Dillon, James Buescher, who is the defending series champion and last Saturday's winner at Michigan, Ron Hornaday Jr., Keselowski and Matt Crafton, the points leader, completed the top-10.
Crafton and Joey Coulter had a run-in late in the race, which led to a heated discussion between the two on pit road after the event had concluded. Coulter finished one spot behind Crafton in 11th.
Crafton's points lead is now 49 over Buescher, who moved up to second in the standings. Jeb Burton is 53 points behind after finishing 12th.
Ben Kennedy, who is the great-grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., finished one lap behind in 20th in his truck debut.
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