Hornaday wins his first Texas race

Ron Hornaday won the Sam's Town 400 at Texas Motor Speedway earning his 35th Craftsman Truck Series victory. It was his first at Texas Motor Speedway.

Hornaday dominated the race, leading 140 laps to set a new track record for most laps led by a winner. He was able to run high or low on the track and could pull away at will from most of his competitors.

The race was marred by several late race cautions, the last setting up a green-white-checkered finish. It was the fifth consecutive time that Craftsman Truck Series has finished that way at Texas.

Hornaday would surely have enjoyed a comfortable margin over his closest competitor but late race accidents kept the margin of victory to a respectable 0.283 seconds over Kyle Busch.

Hornaday's fiercest competition came during the midpoint of the race from Jack Sprague. Sprague led 3 times for 20 laps before ending the night fourth.

Kyle Busch flew from Pocono where he's competing in the Sprint Cup Series this weekend to drive the Ballew Motorsports Toyota Tundra. J.R. Norris qualified the truck which put Busch at the rear of the field for the start.

Unhappy with his ride, Busch made an extended pit stop during the first yellow. Without slamming Norris, Busch said, "There's no one out there who drives like me, so no one can set up a vehicle for me. They gave me an 11th place truck and we worked on it and had an 8th place truck. J.R. (Norris) did a good job setting up the truck, but it just wasn't for me."

Busch drove through the field, putting himself in the top ten within 20 laps. With 41 laps to go, Busch used a restart to drive past Matt Crafton and Scott Speed, to take 5th place. On a subsequent restart he passed Jack Sprague and Johnny Benson to move into the runnerup position.

He poised himself behind Hornaday for the final restart but was unable to make a bid for the lead.

"We'll take a good finish when we can," said Busch before leaving for Nashville to compete in the NASCAR Nationwide Series.

Hornaday, who leads the championship standings, said Busch had nothing to lose on the final restart. "He could have driven up under me and lifted my wheels, but he drove me clean. I hope he does well in his other truck races."

Johnny Benson finished third and Todd Bodine finished fifth.