Credit Allmendinger for keeping Hornaday honest and that says a lot for a driver whose four Champ Car victories can't really count as experience in this sort of racing.

Allmendinger, however, is a quick study. He finished fifth in his third series start at Talladega Superspeedway last October and now owns the best finish by a driver with fewer than 10 starts since Clint Bowyer won last fall at Texas Motor Speedway.

The 25-year-old's runnerup performance came in his ninth appearance as he uses time in his Darrell Waltrip Motorsports Aaron's Lucky Dog Toyota to bolster a fulltime NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series program.

"The truck was awesome but Ron was just a tick better," said Allmendinger. "I knew by ourselves, without him making any mistakes, it was going to be tough to get around him - but with two to go, you never know. If he would have made a mistake there at the end I was going to be all over him."

Allmendinger wasn't the only driver to land a career-best finish. T.J. Bell was ninth - the highest finishing of a star-crossed Roush Fenway Racing trio - to better a 12th-place run at Dover International Speedway in 2003.

The good news was that Matt Crafton took seventh from Skinner in a photo-finish at the stripe and moved up two spots - to sixth in the championship standings.

The negative is that Crafton, with 153 winless starts, is within a race of matching Lance Norick's record for most appearances without a trip to victory lane. Still, Crafton posted his 70th top-10 finish and is 15th in career money won with nearly $2.16 million.

Crafton continues to run in and around the top five each week giving his ThorSport Racing Menards Chevrolet team optimism that a victory may be just around the corner.

Rick Crawford hit a milestone yet dropped a spot in the standings. Crawford, his Power Stroke Diesel by International Ford fast at the beginning, not so good in the middle and a rocket ship at the end, took 10th.

That coupled with Hornaday's victory; however, saw the veteran slip from third to fourth in the rankings.

Still, the finish was his 125th top 10 making Crawford just the fourth driver to hit that number.

Mike Bliss, sixth in Dave Fuge's as yet unsponsored Ford, collected his 99th top 10. Six drivers - three of them former champions - have posted 100 or more top-10 finishes.

Friday's race, witnessed by an estimated 45,000, was the series' second fastest at Lowe's Motor Speedway. The nine different leaders exceeded by one the track record set in 2003.