David Reutimann's No. 17 NTN Bearings Toyota Tundra crossed the finish line in fifth-place in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event at Texas Motor Speedway Friday night.

"The truck felt like it was good the whole race," said Reutimann. "It just needed to be better at various points. It wasn't far off. When you're running wide open as fast as you are, you only have to be off a little bit to make it tough to pass."

With the fastest truck in both practices on Thursday, Reutimann qualified 14th for the 147-lap event. A quarter way through the race, Reutimann entered the top-10 before pitting at Lap 40 for tires under caution.

"It didn't take us long to break into the top-10," said Reutimann. "We were really disappointed with our qualifying effort because we were quickest in first and final practice. We had a solid shot at the pole. I'm not sure exactly what happened. The truck drove fine. I thought we'd be better than that."

With another caution at Lap 61, Reutimann's crew chief elected to stay out as several trucks pitted. Reutimann restarted third seven laps later.

"It felt really good to run in the top-five," said Reutimann. "That's the way we should run every week. If we hadn't had all these mechanical failures, we would've been running that way. We've been plagued with that this year."

With older tires, Reutimann held on to his top-five position and was running fourth at Lap 83.

"We were loose before we pitted again at Lap 86," said Reutimann. "We were able to run in the top-five for a while."

Restarting in ninth-place at Lap 90, Reutimann moved into sixth-place by Lap 115. With less than 10 laps remaining, Reutimann overtook fifth-place to earn his sixth top-five finish of the season.

"There towards the end it was a little too tight behind other trucks and that hurt us," said Reutimann. "The last set of tires felt tighter than the ones before. It was hard to pass. When I pulled up behind another truck, I was tight. You work hard and when you finally get a run on a guy, you get to tight to pass him."

Reutimann is now 13th in the points standings, only 46 points out of tenth-place with two races remaining.

"We are looking forward to both Phoenix and Homestead," said Reutimann. "We finished 21st at Phoenix last year because of a flat tire, but were running in the top-10 before that happened. We started from the pole at Homestead and finished fourth. We're plan to take this same truck to Homestead."