Rookie Wins Truck Series Daytona Race

Friday nights' NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, the NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway, was a good race, peppered with only a few incidents... except for that those last 5 laps that lasted for a long time.


But when all was said and done, rookie John King won the Daytona race on only his eigth start in the truck series and his first start on a superspeedway.

But it took a long time to get there.

During the race there were your usual mishaps and occasional fender crushing caution.  One exceptional and scary looking incident involved Miguel Paludo slamming into the inside wall (above image) and his Duroline truck spinning like a Frisbee off the wall, but he got out and is OK.  (Gotta wonder if there were extra stars in the sky for him after that!  Wow.)

Then as the laps wound down, we watched Mike Skinner leading the pack with John King draft/pushing and the rest of the pack licking their chops, waiting for something to happen.

Lap 104 saw King push a little too hard and Johnny Sauter hit the outside wall, collecting some of the field with his wall kiss.

King was pretty upset about the error on his part.

After exhausting all three green/white/checkered efforts, John King outlasted them all and found himself in victory lane.  (Each restart, someone got too anxious coming out of the turn headed to the white flag and someone found themselves facing the wrong way, just before the start/finish line... in all three restarts.  Thank god NASCAR limits these restarts!)

King won, Timothy Peters finished second, Justin Lofton third, Travis Kvapil was fourth and Jason White rounded out the top-five finsihers.

Of note, veteran Ward Burton brought his State Water Heaters Chevy truck home 8th, and Ty Dillon missed all the wrecks and finished 9th.

As was evident when Speed kept posting Tweets from friends and family of his.  

The highlighted Tweets was getting old...  except for one tweet they posted from Mark Martin, as he remarked on Ty's getting through one wreck.  The booth was surprised Martin had a Twitter account while Michael (I wreck alone) Waltrip commented that he was surprised Mark was still awake.  Yes, Mark joined Twitter a few weeks back gang!

Truck Series Links:   Results | Race Video