The field of 36 form up behind the front row of pole winner Jack Sprague and Dennis Setzer. (Nate Mecha/High Sierra Photo)

Short tracks in general and Memphis Motorsports Park specifically favor veteran drivers - a point driven home emphatically by the final results of Saturday night's NASCAR Camping World Truck Series O'Reilly 200.

Yes, Raybestos Rookie of the Year leader Erik Darnell nearly won and settled for a freshman best, second-place finish at the .75-mile track.

But the remainder of the top five, beginning with winner Jack Sprague, followed form and in spades. Consider this: Sprague, Matt Crafton, Ron Hornaday Jr. and Mike Bliss have won a combined six championships and count 67 victories in 699 total series starts.

Hornaday was the biggest "mover" among the group racing his Kevin Harvick Inc. Chevrolet from 20th to fourth. After a slow start to the season, Hornaday has been on fire with two wins among seven top-five finishes in his most recent nine starts.

That run has moved the 48-year-old Californian from 18th to sixth in the point standings.

"I really wanted that trophy that Jack got," said Hornaday, who came out on the long end of a Turn 1 skirmish in which Johnny Benson spun and was clobbered by Marcos Ambrose. Benson dropped from second to third in points after limping to a finish of 32nd - his worst of the year.

Terry Cook collected a top-10 finish as he broke Rick Crawford's consecutive start record of 210 races. Cook nearly stole the win but was foiled by a late caution without which the remainder of the field would have had to pit under the green with 15 to 20 laps remaining.

Still, Cook finished eighth in his 211th straight appearance and solidified his No. 9 ranking in the championship rankings.

"There at the end, we just couldn't hold them off," said Cook.

Sprague, whose 28th career Budweiser Pole matched Mike Skinner for the all-time series lead, became Memphis' lap leader with the 133 serials he put on the board Saturday night. His 288 laps led bypassed the old mark held by Greg Biffle.

The three-time series champion is closing on another milestone. Sprague soon will become the first driver to lead 6,000 career laps. His current total stands at 5,954.

Four Toyota teams have figured in the truck maker's seven 2006 victories but the one that hasn't won - Darrell Waltrip Motorsports - currently is Todd Bodine's closest championship rival. David Reutimann, whose best season finish is third, added to his string of consistent performances Saturday with a run of seventh.

Every one of Reutimann's finishes has been in the top 15 with 11 among the top 10.

The Florida driver is the only competitor to have completed all 2,326 possible laps - one more than Bodine.

Aric Almirola's No. 75 Spears Motorsports Chevrolet carried the colors of FedEx Express and it marked the first time in history - more than 20 years of NASCAR touring competition - that a Wayne Spears-owned truck or car has shown a primary sponsor other than the owners' plastic pipe fitting manufacturing business.

Spears never has looked for a sponsor - he prefers to call all the shots himself - but came to agreement with Joe Gibbs Racing earlier in the week to showcase FedEx. Almirola is part of the Gibbs team's developmental program. Memphis, of course, is the delivery service's headquarters.

Dennis Setzer posted his 10th consecutive top-10 finish at Memphis. That was the good news. The bad was that Setzer had finished among the top five on nine straight occasions, a streak that came to an end Saturday night.

The O'Reilly 200 marked the third time in 2006 that 35 of 36 starters were around to take the checkered flag.