The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series completed its sixth race of the season on Friday night with the running of the Weather Guard Truck Race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Following Daniel Hemric's win at Martinsville on Friday marked the second consecutive race at a short track for the series.
Practice and qualifying were rained out, so NASCAR's metric for setting the starting lineup in those situations put Hemric on the pole for the 250-lap race around the half-mile track. Stage 1 was slowed twice for incident, including on Lap 53 when Ty Majeski made contact with Frankie Muniz entering Turn 3. That run-in also collected Stewart Friesen and Xfinity Series full-time driver Brandon Jones. Chandler Smith would go on to win the stage.
The only caution of Stage 2 came out on Lap 79 for a spin down the frontstretch from Rajah Caruth after contact with Kaden Honeycutt. With other drivers on older tires, Bayley Currey took advantage of a stop on Lap 60 and drove through the field to win Stage 2.
Caruth inherited the lead to begin the final stage as the only driver that did not pit under the Stage 2 caution. Three more cautions flew in the final stage and Caruth held the lead until Lap 223 when Corey Heim got around him on the backstretch.
Who won the Weather Guard Truck Race at Bristol?
Heim lost the lead on Lap 237 when Smith was scored ahead of him at the time of the race's final caution coming out for Andres Perez. After getting a good restart on Lap 244, Smith, who led a race-high 127 laps, was able to hold off Cup Series star Kyle Larson by 0.934 seconds to win his first race of the season. It is the 22-year-old's first Truck Series win since 2022 after competing in the Xfinity Series the last two seasons. His win clinched the $50,000 Triple Truck Challenge bonus and denied Larson a chance at the weekend sweep, as the 2021 Cup Series champion is running all three races in Thunder Valley this weekend.
Weather Guard Truck Race finishing position | Driver | Points |
|---|---|---|
Winner | Chandler Smith | 59 |
2nd | Kyle Larson | 0 |
3rd | Corey Heim | 41 |
4th | Tyler Ankrum | 46 |
5th | Ben Rhodes | 43 |
6th | Layne Riggs | 38 |
7th | Jake Garcia | 35 |
8th | Kaden Honeycutt | 37 |
9th | Rajah Caruth | 29 |
10th | Gio Ruggiero | 27 |
11th | Jack Wood | 26 |
12th | Grant Enfinger | 25 |
13th | Daniel Hemric | 30 |
14th | Parker Kligerman | 23 |
15th | Corey Day | 0 |
16th | Matt Crafton | 29 |
17th | Dawson Sutton | 20 |
18th | Tanner Gray | 25 |
19th | Andres Perez | 18 |
20th | Matt Mills | 17 |
21st | Tyler Tomassi | 0 |
22nd | Luke Fenhaus | 15 |
23rd | Bayley Currey | 24 |
24th | Connor Mosack | 13 |
25th | Toni Breidinger | 12 |
26th | Justin S Caroll | 11 |
27th | Stewart Friesen | 10 |
28th | Nathan Byrd | 9 |
29th | Patrick Staropoli | 0 |
30th | Spencer Boyd | 7 |
31st | Frankie Muniz | 6 |
32nd | Brandon Jones | 0 |
33rd | Ty Majeski | 4 |
34th | Norm Benning | 3 |
35th | Stephen Mallozzi | 2 |
Due to his two wins (Daytona, Las Vegas) and five top 10s in the season's first six races, Heim has an 18-point lead over Smith in the standings. Heim, Smith and Hemric are the only full-time drivers to visit victory lane so far this season and currently sit atop the playoff leaderboard. The series will make its first stop at Rockingham Speedway since 2013 for the running of the Black's Tire 200 on Friday, April 18 (5 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Larson won the 2013 race.