Peters ended his year-long win drought in the Camping World Truck Series with a repeat of his victory of a year ago at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. “But when you’re getting close to the checkered flag, you’re on your own”, said Peters, who began the race from the pole position. Matt Crafton, who has won the past two series championships, had a bad day and finished 24th. For a spell it looked like the elder Keselowski was on course to win on his series début, but just before the restart on lap 94 the #29 ran out of gas and limped back to pit road.
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“It’s great to go to Victory Lane at Talladega with Ashlee riding shotgun with me”, Peters said.
“It’s real intense, there’s no denying the intensity and the pressure it puts on drivers like myself to be in a cutoff situation where you’re eliminated if things don’t go perfectly on Sunday, ” Earnhardt said Friday.
He wound up a disappointing 17th.
“It’s hard to believe the last time I raced at Talladega was in 2005”, Barrett said. “I’m really proud of how we ran. We’ll see how it works out”.
Rain has pounded the Circuit of the Americas for two days. Then he and other drivers waited through a three-hour delay before race officials postponed qualifying until a rare Sunday morning session before the scheduled afternoon race. As well as Crafton, that accident had also removed Kennedy from contention for the race win as well as Tyler Tanner and Travis Kvapil, while Tifft, Nemecheck, Timmy Hill, Chad Boat, Johnny Sauter and Tyler Reddick had also got involved to a lesser degree. After the wreck on the first lap of the overtime, the race was over – just like that.
Peters dedicated his victory to Ashlee Richmond, the sister of team crew chief Marcus Richmond.
Hamilton has a 66-point lead over Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in the driver standings.
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“I think at that point all bets are off – teammates or not”. Ryan Blaney was second fastest at 196.342. But while still mathematically in the title hunt with four races left, his chances of pushing it to Mexico City next week took a hit when Ferrari fitted his vehicle with a fifth engine, one over the season limit.
