Matt Crafton enters Saturday's Mountain Dew 250 at Talladega Superspeedway looking to close the gap on the leaders in the race to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship.

Crafton arrives in Talladega on the heels of a 3rd place finish at Las Vegas, his ninth top-5 finish this season.  He is in 3rd place in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series standings with a handful of races remaining.

His approach to the wildcard that is Talladega is simple: survive and thrive.

"Talladega is probably the one true place on our schedule where you really have no idea what's gonna happen in the race," said Crafton, who has finished 18th in both previous visits to the track.  "It's all about survival.  It's a fifty-fifty shot whether you're gonna finish the race or wreck, and so much of that is out of your control.  You have to know how to draft, but beyond that, literally anything can happen.  You just take your best shot and hope not to be caught up in someone else's mistake, and if you're running in the top-10 with a few laps to go, you have as good a chance as anyone to win the race.  It's a fine line between patience and aggressiveness, because you can't stay in the back all day and expect to make a late-race run to win.  You have to race your heart out from the green flag to the checkered, and just try to avoid trouble to put yourself in contention at the end."

Crafton has put himself within striking distance of his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship.  He is matter-of-fact about his chances.

"All we can do is continue to focus on top-5 finishes, and try to control what we do the best we can," he said.  "If we start worrying about what other people are doing, we'll lose our focus.  We have to keep running our own race, and let things unfold."