In A Nutshell
One race after surviving carnage at Talladega Superspeedway for his first win of the season, Grant Enfinger immediately turned around and won his second consecutive race, this time at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
It wasn’t an easy day for Enfinger and CR7 Motorsports, as they had to make an unscheduled pit stop for a tire rub following contact with Christian Eckes on a restart. After playing a bit of fuel strategy, the team got back out front and Enfinger held on for back-to-back victories.
The Top Truckers at Homestead-Miami Speedway
Winner, Stage 2 Winner: Grant Enfinger
Polesitter, Stage 1 Winner, Most Laps Led (68 of 134): Corey Heim
Biggest Mover: Tanner Gray (started 33rd, finished 20th)
Rookie of the Race: Connor Mosack
The Winning Move
The lone caution for cause came on lap 77 when Matt Mills slammed the turn 3 wall and caught fire (more on this later). That put the rest of the field just outside of their fuel window, allowing for split strategies and the potential to win on fuel.
As some drivers who stayed out slowly fell to pit road, those who pitted on or after lap 77 found their way to the front. Eventually, it became a battle between Enfinger and Layne Riggs, looking to win his third race of the playoffs, despite not even qualifying for the playoffs.
However, Riggs ran out of fuel with two laps to go, leaving Enfinger with a 10-second lead over the next truck, Nick Sanchez, coming to the white flag. As if that wasn’t enough insurance, Sanchez also ran out of fuel on the final lap, allowing Enfinger to cruise to the finish line by more than 17 seconds over runner-up Ty Majeski.
He even had enough fuel for a nice burnout.
Championship Rundown
At this point, all four drivers below the cut line are in must-win situations. Either that or they need to gain a ton of stage points next week to have a chance. With Enfinger going back-to-back, it means two drivers will make it on points.
It’s very likely that Corey Heim and Eckes will advance with as low as a top-20 finish. Majeski has a 22-point cushion on the cut line, but he can’t afford a bad day, as Rajah Caruth and/or Taylor Gray will be ready to pounce. Especially if they both can grab tons of aforementioned stage points.
While it looks like everyone is safe, the reality is that no one is truly safe … well, except Enfinger.
Rookie Report
Every time Connor Mosack gets in a truck, he seems to impress.
Driving three different trucks for two different teams this season, Mosack has only had two finishes worse than 20th in eight starts this season. At Homestead, Mosack scored a career-best finish of third in a quiet day for the No. 7 team.
Nevertheless, he took advantage of Riggs’ fuel faltering to win this week’s Rookie of the Race. Perhaps a full-time ride is in his future?
No. 02 — Nathan Byrd (29th)
No. 04 — Marco Andretti (30th)
No. 7 — Connor Mosack (third)
No. 22 — Frankie Muniz (33rd)
No. 25 — Dawson Sutton (19th)
No. 38 — Layne Riggs (22nd)
No. 44 — Conor Daly (28th)
No. 46 — Justin Mondeik (33rd)
No. 66 — Conner Jones (25th)
No. 75 — Connor Zilisch (18th)
No. 91 — Corey Day (16th)
Thad Moffitt Update: The Rookie of the Year candidate is still out due to lack of funding. He sits third of the three ROTY drivers. Justin Mondeik drove his No. 46 this week after Young’s Motorsports decided not to enter the truck in the last race at Talladega Superspeedway.
One Big Takeaway From This Race
If you are a part-timer in the series, yet a constant point of discipline and controversy, that’s not a good thing.
Either Conner Jones doesn’t realize this, or just doesn’t care.
Jones found himself under scrutiny for his role in the lap 77 crash with Mills. The crash seemed to stem from Mills blocking the No. 66 going into turn 3. Jones let his frustration get this best of him and he drove right through Mills in the corner. Mills overcorrected trying to gather it up and slammed the outside wall hard, with his truck immediately bursting into flames.
As Mills climbed out of his truck, Jones went on a tirade over the radio, insinuating that he wrecked the No. 42 on purpose.
”It’s been all f*cking year. All f*cking year! He does sh*t to me, I’ve not done sh*t to him. I’m tired of it. I’m f*cking tired of it!”
Then NASCAR remembered it has a rough driving penalty and decided to enforce it for once, holding Jones for two laps as a result of the crash.
But that’s not enough.
This isn’t the first time Jones has drawn the ire of his competitors this season. At Bristol Motor Speedway in the spring, Jones was driving so erratically that NASCAR called him to the hauler after the race. He retired after an incident at North Wilkesboro Speedway in May when his power steering failed, and he refused to keep driving the truck.
At Charlotte Motor Speedway, he was called out by Daniel Dye after the two tangled on track.
That’s not to mention the enemies he’s made in the ARCA Menards Series and the zMAX CARS Tour. He’s been suspended from the CARS Tour before for rough driving and has gotten into a number of conflicts, including with his now-No. 66 co-driver Luke Fenhaus and ARCA driver Christian Rose.
It’s clear that this behavior is not going to change for Jones. Adding on to that, when asked by media for comment on the crash, he asked one of his crew guys, “Should I? Or do you think I’ll say something stupid?”
He eventually declined comment.
This proved to be important, because right before this, the general public had been informed that Mills was taken to a local hospital for further observation following his treatment at the care center.
At some point, Jones has to take accountability. It’s a product of today’s racing, where it’s all take and no give, resulting in dirty driving and irresponsible incidents such as the one we saw on Saturday (Oct. 26).
If NASCAR really wants to send a message to Jones to get him to understand how irresponsible his driving is and how irritated the sanctioning body (as well as his competitors) is with him, park him.
Not just for the next race.
For the rest of the season.
Jones is a Rookie of the Year contender this year despite running just 14 of the 23-race schedule. He made start No. 12 at Homestead, meaning he will finish out the season in the No. 66 truck.
But he shouldn’t.
If NASCAR won’t park him, his team, ThorSport Racing, ought to. It’s not like they couldn’t find a replacement driver. It has Fenhaus, who is just waiting in the wings for his next opportunity in a truck. A suspension for Jones could give Fenhaus two more chances this season to prove himself worthy of a full-time ride.
But a message has to be sent after an incident like this. Sending your fellow competitor to the hospital has to cross some kind of line, and taking no action is inexcusable. Factor in his history as a driver, not just in the Truck Series, but in ARCA and the CARS Tour, this has to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Holding him for two laps does nothing. Send a message. Drop the hammer on him.
Talkin’ Truckers
Enfinger on the win:
Tyler Ankrum (fifth) and Caruth (eighth) break down their afternoons:
Eckes (ninth) details how safe he feels in points and the contact with Enfinger:
Sanchez (13th) says the fuel strategy “just didn’t work out” after running out on the final lap:
Paint Scheme of the Race
If you had taken just a quick glance at Mills’ truck this week, you probably wouldn’t notice anything different about his paint scheme from any other week.
But when you take a closer look, you’ll see that there’s a slight difference.
Mills’ No. 42, normally red, blue and white, traded in the red for a nice shade of pink this week in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As a supporter of BCA myself, I always found great satisfaction in teams running their primary schemes, but switching out one of the colors for pink.
It’s a nice way to support the cause without overtly changing up the original paint scheme when it isn’t needed. Mills and Niece Motorsports pulled this off to perfection.
Mills started 24th and had fought his way toward the top 15, running 19th, before the crash with Jones.
Next Stop
One last chance to run for a championship.
The Craftsman Truck Series heads to Martinsville Speedway on Friday, Nov. 1, for the final race in the Round of 8. Following the race’s conclusion, we will know who our Championship 4 is. This is also the first time the Trucks will run at Martinsville in the fall since 2021.
Zane Smith is the most recent winner of the fall race, while Eckes won this year’s spring race.
Coverage for the Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 200 begins at 8 p.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 1. FOX Sports 1 continues its exclusive television coverage of the Truck Series playoffs, while Motor Racing Network continues its season-long radio coverage of the Truck Series.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter, among many other duties he takes on for the site. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight-choreographer-in-training in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.
Please explain how what Conner Jones did was so terrible? Every single race these ass clowns run over each and blatantly take each other out and it’s called just good hard racing. This is no different than Josh Williams getting parked because a piece of tape fell off of his car. He is the ONLY driver ever parked for this even though in nearly every race this exact same thing happens only usually with parts of the car more substantial that tape. In both cases someone had their pants down stroking as hard as they can to just how tough and badass they are…ridiculous.
The b.s. you’re spewing here is just plain….ridiculous. At no time should it ever be acceptable to put another driver in the hospital because you’re mad at him. If it is acceptable to you, get out of the sport now. This makes you pure scum.
I would love to find out what happened, but apparently Frontstretch can devote 2 articles and multiple repeated videos and twitter posts but can’t seem to find one video to post of the incident itself. And they wonder why there is barely any engagement on this website anymore.