Friday night at Texas Motor Speedway, the 51-year-old California native came
one step closer to making that a reality. Hornaday finished third in his Kevin
Harvick Inc. owner Chevrolet Silverado behind winner Kyle Busch and Matt Crafton
in the Winstar World Casino 350, race No. 23 of 25 on the 2009 Truck Series
schedule.
Hornaday left Texas with a lead of 197 points over Crafton — more than one full
race. If Hornaday simply finishes ahead of Crafton next Friday in Phoenix, he
will clinch his fourth championship there. If Crafton wins both of the final two
races of the season and leads the most laps in each, Hornaday will still win the
title if he averages a finish of 22nd or better in Phoenix and Homestead. In
other words, it's all over but the shouting.
And speaking of shouting, Hornaday was none too pleased with race-winner Busch
for knocking him out of the way twice on the backstretch, the last time coming
on Lap 98, when Busch took a lead he would not surrender.
"It was a great run for the VFW Chevrolet. It is not the way we wanted to
finish," said Hornaday. "Kyle lifted me up pretty good down the back
straightaway. The bumper is bent in pretty good. It is hard to race somebody
that doesn't make a living at it and doesn't care about points. It is tough.
That made my tires mad in (turns) 3 and 4. I don't think I could hold Crafton
off, he had a very good truck tonight. We will take what we can get and go on to
the next two."
And needless to say, Hornaday was not happy with Busch, with whom he has tangled
before. "Not once, twice but three times, I was sideways down the back
straightaway," said Hornaday. "I felt like it was Talladega all over again. Got
down in there and he just sucked me around so. Good save, but it is not the day
we wanted. Top-three coming out of Texas is pretty good because we usually win
or something happens here and we finally came out with a top-three so we will
take this Chevrolet and move on to the next two (races)."
As for the series title, Hornaday insisted he isn't thinking about that yet.
"It isn't a championship, it is just a race right now," he said. "We have two
more to go and we are just going to race as hard as we can. Racing … we just
need to win the next two."
