Matt Crafton locked up his second consecutive championship in the Camping World Truck Series with his ninth-place finish in the Ford EcoBoost 200 at Homestead on Friday evening. Crafton, the 38-year-old driver of the #88 Toyota at ThorSport Racing, won twice this year, at Martinsville in March and Texas in June. It was the first multiple-win season of Crafton's career, which has seen 338 consecutive starts. His rookie season in the series was 2001, but he did not visit victory lane for the first time until 2008. Crafton also won once in 2011 and 2013 en route to his first championship. Crafton's second championship makes him the first driver in the history of the Camping World Truck Series to win back-to-back championships. The series debuted in 1995 and has seen non-consecutive repeat series champions in the past.
Finishing second in the final standings was 20-year-old (soon to be 21) Ryan Blaney, who won at the road course in Bowmanville, Ontario in August with a narrow victory over German Quiroga. Blaney encountered a loose-handling truck and a broken shifter during the race on Friday, but came back to finish fifth. Since Crafton finished higher than 22nd place, Blaney kept his runner-up position in the points. Blaney drove the #29 Ford owned by Brad Keselowski this year but is not returning to the team in 2015. However, he plans to stay in trucks full-time, and also compete in some Xfinity and possibly Cup races. Blaney's teammate in the #19 Ford, Tyler Reddick, who spun late in the race after also getting loose, finished a close second to Ben Kennedy of Turner Scott Motorsports' #31 Chevrolet in the running for the Rookie of the Year award.
Darrell Wallace Jr. was the winner of Friday's 200-mile, 134-lap race. The 21-year-old driver of the #54 Toyota owned by Kyle Busch held off Busch himself, Blaney, polesitter Kyle Larson (who also led the most laps) and Timothy Peters to pick up his fourth win of the season. This gave Busch a total of 14 wins this season as an owner, seven of which he also got as a driver, and he easily took the 2014 Truck Series owner's championship. Busch has also selected ARCA driver Justin Boston, who signed with Joe Gibbs earlier this year, to drive one of his trucks in 2015. With that, another Truck Series season has ended and the 2015 season begins at Daytona in February.
One additional thing: I started a Tumblr account to count down to the 2015 Daytona 500. When that race is over I may do other posts on it. Here is the link:
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