{"id":23714,"date":"2014-09-19T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/crafton-takes-truck-series-points-lead-to-new-hampshire\/"},"modified":"2014-09-19T17:07:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T17:07:00","slug":"crafton-takes-truck-series-points-lead-to-new-hampshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/crafton-takes-truck-series-points-lead-to-new-hampshire\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafton takes Truck Series points lead to New Hampshire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last Saturday, Crafton&#8217;s second-place finish coupled with a 14th-place run for Johnny Sauter at Chicagoland allowed Crafton to take a five-point lead over his ThorSport Racing teammate. Sauter held a seven-point advantage prior to Chicagoland.<\/p>\n<p>With seven races to go, Crafton is trying to become the first driver in the 20-year history of the Truck Series to win back-to-back championships.<\/p>\n<p>This will be the 17th time the series competes at New Hampshire. Crafton has 11 previous starts, which is more than any other driver entered in this race.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been two years since the trucks have raced (at New Hampshire), but I&#8217;ve had some good runs there in the past,&#8221; Crafton said. &#8220;We got our first pole there in 2005. To me, the biggest challenge at Loudon is the track itself. It&#8217;s tough to run side-by-side because there is really only one preferred groove. The challenge is to stay patient and not get caught-up in a wreck trying to make something happen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Crafton&#8217;s best finish at New Hampshire is fourth, which occurred twice, most recently in 2010. Sauter has placed no worse than seventh in his first three truck races here (2009-11).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;New Hampshire is an awesome place to race,&#8221; Sauter said. It&#8217;s short-track racing at its best, and I&#8217;m a short-track racing kind of guy&#8230;I&#8217;ve always run well there in the trucks, even Nationwide and Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan Blaney is presently 16 points behind Crafton, while Darrell Wallace Jr. trails by 35 points.<\/p>\n<p>Kyle Busch won the three previous truck races at New Hampshire, but Busch, a Sprint Cup Series regular and member of the championship Chase, is not competing in this year&#8217;s event here.<\/p>\n<p>Erik Jones will drive Busch&#8217;s No. 51 Toyota at this track. Jones, who is running a partial schedule for Kyle Busch Motorsports this season, won at Iowa, a 0.875-mile track, in July.<\/p>\n<p>Busch scored his sixth victory of the season at Chicagoland.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty teams are on the entry list for the UNOH 175.<\/p>\n<p>Series: NASCAR Camping World. Date: Saturday, Sept. 20. Race: UNOH 175. Site: New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Track: 1.058-mile oval. Start time: 1 p.m. ET. Laps: 175. Miles: 185.15. Television: FOX Sports 1. Radio: Motor Racing Network (MRN)\/SIRIUS NASCAR Radio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Saturday, Crafton&#8217;s second-place finish coupled with a 14th-place run for Johnny Sauter at Chicagoland allowed Crafton to take a five-point lead over his ThorSport Racing teammate. Sauter held a seven-point advantage prior to Chicagoland. With seven races to go, Crafton is trying to become the first driver in the 20-year history of the Truck [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}