It was a cold night, but that didn't stop Mike Skinner's hot streak as he rolled to his second consecutive NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series victory in Friday's American Commercial Lines 200 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. With the win, Skinner completed the clean sweep as he was fastest in the morning practice, earned the Bud Pole Award in the afternoon qualifying, and sealed the deal with his 21st career series victory.

Skinner, who led five times for 67 laps, took the lead for the final time on a restart on lap 124. Clint Bowyer came down to take the green flag in the lead, but Skinner executed a perfect bump-and-run restart, slowing Bowyer's progress on the start just enough to take the lead.

"I think if you spin the leader on a restart, you should be black-flagged," Skinner said. "Unless it's a racing deal like he misses a shift or something. We got into him just enough that he spun the tires and lost his momentum."

Skinner's No. 5 Toyota Tundra Toyota may have had the best truck on the short run late in the race, but had there been a protracted green flag period in the late stages, Todd Bodine may have had the truck to beat, a fact Skinner himself alluded to post-race.

"I think our truck showed that in the early stages of the race," Skinner said. "We had a lot of motor and it would run real fast for 15 laps then we got so loose I couldn't hold on to it. On the long runs Todd had the best truck and on the short run we had the best truck. That's just the way it worked out."

While Skinner celebrated his victory, Bodine was more than happy to chase his fellow Toyota driver across the line.

"We are tickled," Bodine said. "We struggled in California. We are trying to figure this coil binding out. Mike Senior and Mike Junior went to work on it and figured it out. Hopefully we can continue to build on this and get a little better. Mike and I were about even on the short runs. We both had really good trucks. His would go away a little and mine would keep running. I knew at the end when we got first and second at the end that was going to be how it was going to end. We needed about 20 laps at the end and we would have had something for him. We'll take second at the end with our Lumber Liquidators Toyota and be happy with it."

For Bowyer, he was relegated to third place after leading within 10 laps to go.

"It's kind of hard to go when the rear wheels are off the ground," Bowyer quipped. "He did what he had to do. I am not going to cry about it, I had a good truck and we had a lot of fun out there."

Matt Crafton brought the No. 88 Menards/Quaker State Chevrolet home in the third position, tying a career best. Crafton had an adventurous night, getting punted on the initial start and damaging the spoiler braces on the tailgate of his machine. That necessitated a pit stop for repairs that left him nearly a lap down in the early stages.

Mike Skinner smokes 'em up in celebration of his victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway. (David M. Vaughn Photo)

"A lot of people were spinning their tires on the initial start, we spun our tires and got run into from behind," Crafton said. "It broke two spoiler braces and I saw the official pointing to them and knew we'd have to come back in and fix it. We came back from dead last to finish third. We were unbelievably good on the long run. We didn't have anything for the top two, but we were a third-place truck here tonight. We're happy, but we're not satisfied. We'll be satisfied when we're sitting where Skinner is right now."

Rick Crawford drove his No. 14 Ford Power Stroke Diesel by International Ford to fourth in his 250th career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start. Jack Sprague, also making his 250th career series start, was running fourth on a restart on lap 109 when transmission problems dropped him off the pace, relegating him to a 23rd-place finish in the No. 60 Con-way Freight Toyota.

There were a record nine caution flags for a total of 44 laps, mainly for incidents on the track. It started on the start of the race when the field scrambled, sending trucks into the grass and debris along the frontstretch. Chase Miller ran over a loose bumper bar and bounced his truck off the wall on the next lap to cause the first caution, which was followed on lap 26 by a competition caution to allow the teams to assess tire wear. Tire issues put Terry Cook into the wall on lap 57, Chad McCumbee got a tap in traffic sending him into the turn two wall on lap 67, and Joey Clanton, Travis Kvapil and Bill Lester slid off turn four to bring out the fifth caution of the night on lap 76. The hits kept coming for Lester as he was involved with Mike Bliss on lap 90 and a solo trip to the wall on lap 110. Kraig Kinser thumped the turn two wall hard in lap 101, and A.J. Allmendinger brought out the final caution when he crashed on the backstretch on lap 118.

The cautions kept the average speed to a paltry 105.739 miles per hour in a race that took 1 hour, 53 minutes, and 36 seconds to complete.

Skinner unofficially assumes the championship point lead with 550 points over Bodine's 481 and Hornaday's 451.

Next up for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is the Kroger 250 at the half-mile Martinsville Speedway. TruckSeries.com will have complete event coverage starting with practice and qualifying on Friday March 30, and we'll have total race coverage on Saturday March 31.