Crafton survives late restarts to hold off Suarez for Texas truck win

Back-to-back and reigning Camping World Truck Series champion Matt Crafton withstood a fierce challenge from rookie Daniel Suarez and pulled away to win Friday night's WinStar World Casino & Resort 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Crafton, who spent most of the race's first half running well behind pole sitter Erik Jones, dominated the second half of the race after Jones suffered a voltage issue on his Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota on Lap 85 of 167 and was forced to have his battery replaced during an extended visit to pit road.

Jones lost a lap and later had to have a second battery replaced. He finished 15th, two laps down, after leading 68 laps.

Crafton held more than a four-second lead when the caution flag waved with 20 laps to go for Timothy Peters' blown engine, setting up pit stops and bunching up the field. Suarez gave Crafton all he could handle for two laps on the restart with 17 to go, and even pulled ahead momentarily, before Crafton's No. 88 ThorSport Racing truck reassumed the lead and set sail.

A final caution for a Daniel Hemric spin with seven laps to go set up another restart with two laps left, giving Suarez one more shot at Crafton, but the veteran quickly pulled away and went on to collect his third win of the young season.

"Those restarts were hairy," said Crafton, who led a race-high 77 laps and earned his eighth career truck victory. "Spun the tires so bad on the restart before that (last one). I have to thank Johnny Sauter, my teammate; he gave me a good push on the second-to-last restart, and we finally got a pretty good restart on that last one. Man, it’s like you're running side-by-side-by-side, but these guys never game up working on this Menards Toyota Tundra, and it's all about these guys building me good trucks."

Suarez was disappointed he couldn't get around Crafton and grab his first career truck win, despite a valiant effort.

"I need to talk with Kyle (Busch, team owner) to get some advice to race hard," Suarez said. "I felt like we had a really fast Toyota Tundra ARRIS truck. I felt we were a little loose on the bottom. It was fine to race side-by-side for a few laps with new tires, but with old tires it was either to wreck or to try it, and I was close a couple times and I didn't want to wreck and throw away a good second-place. I'm happy, but I feel like we're getting closer and closer -- we'll get one soon."

Following second-place Suarez in the top five were John Wes Townley, Johnny Sauter and Austin Theriault.

Crafton remained the series points leader and holds a 25-point lead over Brad Keselowski Racing's Tyler Reddick. Jones is third, 32 points behind Crafton.