After making a late-race pit stop for tires and fuel, Matt Crafton weaved through traffic and stayed out of trouble to pick up a sixth-place finish in the No. 88 Menards/Ideal Door Chevrolet in Friday night's Too Tough to Tame 200 at Darlington Raceway.
Crafton patiently worked his way through traffic throughout the evening, concentrating on racing the racetrack and not the other competitors. And a gamble to pit just 12 laps after most of the field made their final pit stops of the night nearly paid off with even bigger dividends.
"Everyone pitted with that caution around the halfway point and we knew it would be close to make it on fuel if it went green from there," Crafton said. "We had another caution about 10 laps later and we came down to take tires and top off the fuel. We were hoping for some more green flag racing in the second half because a lot of those guys would have had to pit again for fuel."
Even without the top five drivers stopping to top off their fuel cells, Crafton was able to race back towards the front despite a couple of close calls.
"Everyone talks about how tough this place is and then a lot of them go out and run hard and bounce off the fence and use their stuff up or wreck it and we didn't want to do that," Crafton said. "We knew we had to be smart here. I saw the 51 (Aric Almirola) slide up and smack the fence right in front of me. Sometimes you just get racing someone too hard and it takes your focus off racing the track and you get into trouble. We said we wanted to get this one in the rearview mirror and come out of here with a good finish and we did. It would have been great to get another top-five but we'll take sixth and head on down to Bristol."
Crafton unofficially dropped one position in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship standings to seventh, but he's just one point behind sixth-place Ron Hornaday and just 16 points behind fifth-place Austin Dillon.
"We need to go to Bristol and stay out of trouble and finish in front of the 3 and the 33," Crafton said. "The best way to do that is to go down there and win. Once we get past Bristol there are a lot of tracks where we're going to be really strong. We haven't given up on the championship yet."
Next up for Crafton and the No. 88 Menards/SealBest Chevrolet is the O'Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway on Wednesday August 18. The race will be televised live on SPEED starting at 7:30 P.M. Eastern. The race will also be broadcast live on select affiliates of the MRN Radio network nationwide and on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128 (XM 104).
