It's been a while since Brian Scott was last in victory lane at the end of a
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race - May 2009 at Dover to be exact, 22 starts ago for the Kyle Busch Motorsports driver - so he was taking every bit of pleasure in his achievement that he could after a close end to a crash-strewn Lucas Oil 150 at Phoenix International Raceway on Friday night.
Scott had started from third place behind a second row consisting of polesitter Nelson Piquet Jr. and Ryan Blaney. Piquet led for the first eight laps, but then it was Scott who took over at the front and proceeded to look very comfortable indeed out front as he proceeded to lead the next 44 laps in a single uninterrupted stint that included two cautions - a yellow on lap 37 for Jeff Choquette, and another on lap 45 for John King.
It was after the third caution of the night on lap 50 - for a wreck which saw Jason White collect Todd Bodine on the frontstretch - that Scott was finally ousted from the front at the restart by young rookie driver Ty Dillon, but it was a quick return to yellow after Parker Kligerman slid into Matt Crafton's truck at turn 2 on lap 55.
"To get loose and get into the wall, that's not very good driving," admitted Kligerman. "But we were just really loose all night."
The restart on lap 65 also proved short-lived: this time, it was a multi-car incident that caught up polesitter Nelson Piquet Jr., Johnny Sauter, Ron Hornaday Jr. and Miguel Paludo in turn 4. That kept the race under yellow until lap 73, and at the restart it was Cale Gale who went for a spin at turn 4 to promptly return the race to another caution.
Finally on lap 79 came a restart that took, and Ryan Truex took over the lead of the race for 22 laps until his truck started to get tight and Justin Lofton was able to oust him from the top spot, pulling Timothy Peters with him into second place ahead of Brian Scott, with Truex falling to third ahead of Kyle Larson.
A new caution on lap 102 for a frontstretch spin by Brian Weber that also caught out Truex and Blaney shuffled the running order during the pit stop sequence, and at the restart on lap 109 the top ten consisted of Peters ahead of Scott, Larson, Dillon, Joey Coulter, Brendan Gaughan, James Buescher, German Quiroga, Ryan Sieg and Nelson Piquet Jr.
Larson pulled off a nice dive down the inside to take the lead from Peters, but behind them there was trouble: Quiroga locked up driving too hard into turn 1 and proceeded run into the back of Gaughan, with Dillon unable to avoid the accident happening right in front of him.
Gaughan was not pleased, and stormed over to the #51 to rage at the young Mexican who had sparked the wreck: reaching into the cockpit and pulling on Quiroga's to make his emphatic point.