Last week at Chicagoland Speedway, Ron Hornaday Jr. didn't have the results that have typified his season so far. He qualified outside of the top five for the first time and finished 11th, his lowest finish since a pair of tough races at Dover (26th) and Texas (19th).
Despite a non-typical night, Hornaday holds a solid lead over Matt Crafton (No. 88 Menards Chevrolet). Hornaday is 220 points ahead of the second-place Crafton. But with nine races to go, anything can happen. Just look back to 2005. Ted Musgrave trailed Dennis Setzer by 227 points with ten to go. With nine to go, he trailed the leader by 178 points. In the last nine races, Musgrave had a 233-point swing and ended up winning the championship by 55 points over Setzer.
While they head to another new track this weekend, chances are both these drivers will be a factor.
Hornaday holds the series record for most wins on short tracks. Twenty of his 45 wins in the series have come on tracks of less than a mile in length. During his record-setting, five-race win streak this season, two of those came on short tracks (Memphis, O'Reilly Raceway Park).
Crafton has made it very clear the battle isn't over. He's had strong performances on some of the tracks with a length of a mile or less. He scored a sixth-place finish at Dover, fifth at Memphis, and most recently was runner-up to Kyle Busch at Bristol.
"We're definitely still in this thing," said Crafton. "There's a lot of racing left. We've all seen examples of how points can swing one way or another pretty quickly, so there's no reason to think it won't happen for us. Our focus remains on being as strong as we can be each week, and letting the chips fall where they may. We show up each week expecting good things to happen, and the guys are working their tails off."
