Cautions, restarts, retribution, extra laps and high action marked Friday night’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway. And that was just the final 50 laps.
In the end, ThorSport Racing’s Ben Rhodes claimed his second series championship in the last three years with a hard-earned fifth-place finish in the No. 99 Ford while McAnally Hilgemann Racing’s Christian Eckes raced to his fourth win of the season by a slight 0.421s over rookie teammate Jake Garcia in four dramatic overtime periods.
That’s the conclusion to an evening that featured 12 caution periods, 29 laps of overtime competition and plenty of high-stakes racing – especially among the four championship contenders that earned a chance to settle the season title.
Perhaps indicative of the night, Rhodes’ finish and ultimate trophy haul wasn’t secure until the checkered flag with championship runner-up Grant Enfinger giving it his all in the No. 23 GMS Racing Chevrolet coming off Turn 4 in an all-out pursuit to the very end.
Both Rhodes and Enfinger had survived close calls in the overtime laps. Rhodes collided with Zane Smith racing for the lead – hitting Smith’s truck when it appeared Smith missed a shift out front in the second overtime restart. Enfinger had close calls in two of the four extra-lap periods and still was able to pull off that final push forward; ultimately finishing one position behind Rhodes in the standings.
The championship comes down to the final corner! @benrhodes holds off @GrantEnfinger
— NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Trucks (@NASCAR_Trucks) November 4, 2023
The regular season champion and race polesitter Corey Heim finished 18th after contact from fellow Championship 4 driver Carson Hocevar with 30 laps of regulation remaining in the scheduled 150-lap race.
“I can’t even believe it,” the 26-year-old Kentucky native Rhodes said of his dramatic title win. “It’s just so awesome, man. To go 25 laps into overtime, do you know what that feels like? It’s crazy. I didn’t think we were going to make it. I thought we were going to pop a tire, that anything that could have gone wrong was going to go wrong.
“Grant almost got me. But hats off to him, he ran a great race. I wouldn’t want to race against anybody else for the championship. He raced me clean, and I respect the heck out of him for it.”
“I saw him,” Rhodes said of Enfinger’s final push forward in the last corner. “He went for everything, but he ran me clean, and I thank him for that. That’s what these championships are all about.”
Enfinger, whose GMS Racing team is closing shop at the end of the season, was especially gutted to come so very close to his first championship.
“I don’t know,” Enfinger said of doing anything differently on that last lap.
“Obviously we got loose there at the end,” he continued. “May be if he didn’t have such a good run down the backstretch, we’d be able to make that pass. It’s a shame the championship came down to a race like that with 15 green-white-checkers or whatever it was. I feel like we did everything we could to win this and just got used up.”
The other two championship contenders, Heim and Hocevar had a more contentious situation on-track. Heim, whose 47 laps out front in the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota were second most laps led on the night, was actually leading the championship-eligible drivers when Hocevar hit him going into Turn 2 with 30 laps remaining. The contact sent Heim’s Toyota into Stewart Friesen’s Toyota which hit the wall and brought out a caution. Hocevar continued on and Heim had to pit for repairs and went down a lap.