Chris Buescher Wins Xfinity Series Championship
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| Chris Buescher hoists the championship trophy at Homestead |
| Chris Graythen/Getty Images |
Chris Buescher won his first-career NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship in Saturday’s Ford EcoBoost 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, beating out defending series champion Chase Elliott for the title in just his second full season in the series.
Kyle Larson took the checkered flag in the season-finale race for his first Xfinity Series win of the season. Larson led the final five laps after passing race leader Austin Dillon for the top spot.
Dillon held on for second followed by newly crowned Camping World Truck Series Champion Erik Jones in third. Brian Scott and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five finishers.
Buescher, who had held the points lead for the last 23 races, cruised to the finish line in 11th place and clinched the title by 15 points over Elliott and 18 points over Ty Dillon.
Buescher’s championship-winning drive is the fifth driver’s title for Roush-Fenway Racing and their third in the last five years after winning back-to-back championships with Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. in 2011 and 2012.
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| Chris Buescher lights 'em up after coming home 11th in the season-finale race |
| Jonathan Ferrey/NASCAR via Getty Images |
Buescher is the second member of his extended family to win a NASCAR title, following his cousin James Buescher, who won the truck series championship in 2012.
"This is the biggest moment in my career," said Buescher. "Just an awesome year for our organization, for our team. The guys did a tremendous job. No DNFs all year, no mechanical failures, nothing that we beat ourselves on. You know, we were flawless in that regard, and it put us in the position to go out and win this thing like we can today. We didn't have to go out there and win the race in order to bring a championship home. We had to make sure we finished, and we did just that.
Buescher, a native of Prosper, Texas, began his racing career driving Legends Cars before moving up to stock cars in the ARCA Series in 2010. The following year, he signed as a development driver for RFR running a limited schedule in the Xfinity Series.
In 2012, Buescher captured the ARCA Series championship before moving on to run full-time for RFR in the Xfinity Series.
"I am blessed to be here," said Buescher. "It is so cool to be able to pull it off. It is so nice to have everybody out here to support us and be with us for this accomplishment.
"I've got to thank my parents for being gracious enough to let me move away from home at 16 years old. That was tough on them. But I think after today, they know it was well worth it."
[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]Needing to finish 13th or better on Saturday, Buescher played it safe for much for the race and kept his no. 60 Ford in the top-20 and never mounted much of a challenge for the lead.
Up in front, the race for the top spot was Kyle versus Kyle, as Larson and polesitter Kyle Busch traded the lead six time over the opening 80 laps.
Busch looked to finally get the better of Larson after winning the race off pit road during the final round of pit stops with 21 laps to go, but Busch was nabbed with a penalty for an uncontrolled tire and was sent to the back of the line, handing the lead to Austin Dillon.
Dillon grabbed the lead on the restart and tried to open up a gap on Larson, but Larson tracked him down and was right on Dillon’s bumper when Dillon scraped the wall coming out of turn four with five laps to go, giving Larson an opening to take the lead.
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| Larson wins his first Xfinity Series race of the season |
| Jeff Curry/NASCAR via Getty Images |
Dillon made a couple of challenges on Larson on the low side over the next two laps before Larson was able to pull away, beating out Dillon by half a straightaway.
"All these cars prepared a great car for me," said Larson. "From the moment we unloaded off the truck, I don’t know that we made any adjustments, the car was amazing. I knew we were going to be good in the race – we didn’t qualify that well – but as soon as the green flag dropped I was able to power my way up and almost get by Kyle. Then it was just a matter of me staying in front of him on the short runs – I was really good on long runs but he was a little bit better on the short runs. Then he had his pit issue there and that really saved the race for us.
"I about gave it away on the last two restarts, especially the last one, that was pretty hairy there, I almost wrecked myself and Erik Jones and he wasn’t too happy with me there. I was able to get ripping on the top and run down Austin (Dillon) and he made a mistake there trying to run really aggressive because we were really good up there.
"I love this track, I almost won the last few races here and it feels good to finally get it done."
Kyle Larson Post-Race Press Conference
THE MODERATOR: Our race winner for today's 21st annual Ford EcoBoost 300 is Kyle Larson, and he's the driver of the 42 Crest Chevrolet for Harry Scott Jr., and he's joined by his crew chief Mike Shiplett. Congratulations, Kyle. Congratulations, Harry and Mike. Kyle, I'm going to start with you. You just got a pretty good compliment there from Roger Penske about the ride that you had out here today. That certainly is tall praise. I must say that the ride that you had out there today tracking down Dillon after you got behind there, this has to rank as a pretty good victory for you, doesn't it?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, for sure. This is definitely my favorite racetrack on the circuit by fashion, at least for the XFINITY Series goes. I was close to winning my rookie season here in 2013, about 50 foot short of winning it last year, and then this year once again we had a really fast car and was able to lead the most laps again and almost gave it away again on a late-race restart. I was pretty frustrated with myself with 12 or so laps to go when Austin was about half a straightaway in front of me, and I didn't even know if I could get to third, really. I was surprised that those guys up in front of me didn't get to the wall where I had been running the whole race, and once the tires kind of slowed down, I was able to close very quickly on those guys and get to Austin's back bumper and kind of put a little pressure on him to make a mistake there because he knew he had to move up and try and take my line away and do it really fast.
[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]He just got in the corner a little too hard and straight and got into the wall, and I was able to get my car turned down underneath him and come away with the lead off 4 and then just kind of cruise to the win.
Q. Kyle, can you talk about those battles you had with Kyle Busch and Austin Dillon and coming back there on the closing laps to win?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, Kyle was better than me, I thought, for probably eight to ten laps, and it was a matter of me just being able to beat him into Turn 1, clear him off Turn 2, and then just trying to hold him off and watch my mirror a lot to try and take his air away. We were side drafting each other a few different restarts down the straightaways, and I was able to come out in front of him each time, which was good for our race because it made him drive really hard to make mistakes that you don't hardly ever see. He got into the wall a few times, and then their pit crew made an error there on the past pit stop. I thought it was going to be a lot easier to get the win after my team said that the 54 had an uncontrolled tire.
And then to go into the last – second to last restart – the third to last restart, actually, I had the 33 to my back bumper, and I normally – well, I normally am not on the front row to even control a restart, so I don't do it often, but you try and wave them to come to your back bumper to close momentum so he did it the first time and we were able to clear Kyle off 2. I knew I shouldn't have done it the second to last restart because it was within 20 to go, but I did it, and Austin hung me out there once we got clear of the flag stand, which he should have, and I was kind of mad at myself for doing it.
Yeah, then the last restart, I just told myself not to spin the tires, and I was a little too hesitant taking off, and then got rolling into it too quick and spun my tires really bad, and then just – I don't even know what happened in the middle on 2, but I was in like fifth off 2.
I almost wrecked myself trying to clear myself up in front of Erik Jones. He hooked me a little bit and got me squirrelly, and then he was upset at me and psycho swerved at me into 1 and got into my left front and thought I was going to get in the outside wall. Was able to keep it off that, and then, yeah, I just got really upset at myself and just started driving really hard, kissed the wall a few times, but never got the right front into it, so I was able to keep my speed up and just close a few car lengths of straightaway it seemed like. Glad I didn't run out of time because I've been wanting to win here for a few years, and came close to giving it away.
Q.What did you think of your pit stops?
KYLE LARSON: Our pit stops were solid all night. They've been good all year. Last year I struggled on pit road myself and lost a few races, a couple races here the last weekend, and then we've been – they've been really good all season long. Had a pit crew change after I think the second race of the season, and I'd been starting to go to the shop and watch pit film, review that stuff, and see where I was making mistakes, learning from those guys on what to do to make our stops better, and since then we've been pretty solid.
The last stop it seemed like there might have been an issue on the right front maybe and the 54 beat us off pit road but caught a break with his pit crew making a mistake. But yeah, other than that, our pit stops have been solid all year long.
Q. Kyle, obviously two different series, two different cars, but could you just talk about the confidence, having this kind of good run tonight gives you for tomorrow and finishing out the season real strong?
KYLE LARSON: I always have a lot of confidence when I come to Homestead. It's just there's no other track that suits me like this track. You practice right against the wall, and it's – I don't know, I'm just really comfortable running against the wall.
No, I love this track, and I seem to always have good race cars when I've came here. I ran for Turner in the Truck Series, Turner Scott Motorsports in XFINITY, and Chip's stuff in the Cup Series, and I always have really good race cars when I come here. It's a matter of me not making too many mistakes throughout the race, and I seem to run up front a lot. You look at my stats, and I don't lead many laps, but this is about the one track where I lead the most laps.
Yeah, I wish we could come here about half the season, but we don't, and we've got to go run racetracks on the bottom about every week, and I look forward to going to the tracks where we can run the top. But yeah, I'm excited for tomorrow. We had a really good car today in practice. I thought we were definitely a top 5 car. I thought I could – once the track got shaded I could move around quite a bit. So yeah, we'll see.
Practice is tough here in the Cup car because it's swayed by people – you can run really fast lap times in practice by just running inches off the wall, but then it seems when the race fires off, it's hard to do that every lap, and the guys that have practiced running the middle or splitting the top seam seem to shine more, and that's what I've tried to get better at here in the practice in the Cup Series by just running consistent laps up top.
Q. Kyle, obviously Ford and Ganassi announced the permanent lineups for the two GTs. Do you expect to be part of that?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I don't know. There's been lots of talk about us running the prototype car again in Daytona. I don't know if it's 100 percent sure yet or not, and then as far as Le Mans goes, that would be a lot of fun to do for sure. So we'll just have to wait and see, talk to Chip, and see what sprint car races are out there.
Q. Kyle, just thinking about the roller coaster that this sport can be, what level of frustration have you had this season in this series, number one, but number two, ever had more fun than running this race today or any race at this level?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I've been frustrated a number of times this year. Some races we haven't had the speed that we had last year, but then we've also had a lot of races where we were pretty fast, and then something would happen to us in the last run of the race to where we would drop 10 or more spots and not get the finish we deserved.
See, it's just been a really inconsistent year. Last year I thought I could run-in side the top 12 almost every weekend, where this year we'll run – like I said, we'll be running in the top eight and something will happen, or we just have a bad car and run outside the top 30.
It's been frustrating both series. Harry had mentioned running out of fuel there at Chicago twice in one day. It was really frustrating. So there was a lot of frustrating moments, but then you get to go to fun racetracks like this fun and forget all those moments and you enjoy it. To win, it's really special, especially when you haven't won in over a year in a NASCAR national series. Glad to finally get another win.
Q. Kyle, the story with the hat, how long did it take you to find that? Did they increase the price on it when they found out who wanted to buy it?
KYLE LARSON: No. I got it – I got a few vintage hats during the past off-season right before Speedweeks, and this was one of the hats that I picked up off eBay. I probably only got it for like 26 bucks plus tax and shipping. Yeah, no, it's his '93 rookie season hat.
I was a year old.
No, it's cool to pay a little bit of respect back to Jeff Gordon. It's also neat to say that I was able to win a race on his final weekend of racing. I hope I can win it tomorrow. But yeah, everybody in the sport has looked up to him, and it's going to be sad to see him running his final laps tomorrow, but man, it's going to be awesome if he can pull off that championship. Quite a party in Miami, too, afterwards, I'm sure.
Chris Buescher Post-Race Press Conference
THE MODERATOR: We're going to call up our 2015 driver champion, and that's Chris Buescher, and of course Chris is the driver of the No. 60 Fastenal Ford for Roush Fenway, and he is our 2015 NASCAR XFINITY Series champion.
Congratulations, Chris. 15 points ahead of defending champion Chase Elliott, and you join good company here as you become the second NASCAR XFINITY Series champion from the state of Texas, joining Bobby Labonte who won the title in 1991. Talk about this championship and what's it feel like to be a NASCAR champion.
CHRIS BUESCHER: It's obviously pretty big. This is the biggest moment in my career. Just an awesome year for our organization, for our team. The guys did a tremendous job. No DNFs all year, no mechanical failures, nothing that we beat ourselves on. You know, we were flawless in that regard, and it put us in the position to go out and win this thing like we can today. We didn't have to go out there and win the race in order to bring a championship home. We had to make sure we finished, and we did just that.
Just so proud of the guys. Just thank you to Ford and all of our sponsors, Fastenal and Roush and AdvoCare and everyone that came on board and helped this year. I think we ran 11 different paint schemes to make it to the end.
It was a tough year, but I'm so happy we were able to pull it off, and again, just so proud of my team. They've really stepped up to the occasion and made sure that this happened.
Q. Chris, you and I have joked about your Twitter profile before, so now that you are known as the 2015 XFINITY Series champion, any plans to make change that?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I might have to modify that a little bit. I may or may not have thought about that already.
Q. Chris, was it as hard as you thought it would be to win a championship?
CHRIS BUESCHER: It is every bit as stressful as I thought it would be. You know, it's always difficult. This is a tremendous amount of – a tremendous depth of talent through the XFINITY Series and through all the NASCAR series right now. I think that makes it that much more special knowing that we beat some of the best guys coming up through the sport right now and able to pull it off here at the end. It's a very special, very humbling experience, but you know, it's not easy.
You know, this is a very difficult thing to get to, and you know, it was a lot of hard work. A lot of time put in, a lot of after hours by the guys at the shop, and making sure that we did everything we could to be here, and when everybody is willing to do it and they have that drive and everybody is happy and works well together, it puts together an awesome team that has the will power to go do this.
[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]So it was hard, but we did it better than anybody else, and that's why we get to sit here right now.
Q. This is a little bit facetious, but did you ever think about, let's make a run for the front and scare your crew?
CHRIS BUESCHER: You know, today was – I had a panic moment for them. I got three wide one time, and they got – their voices elevated over the radio. It was something like a three wide middle, middle being back out, like that's enough. Just be careful. We had to come out here – I can't tell you how many times Herm told me to keep that right side clean, just knowing that last year here a couple guys got into the fence with the right side and actually cut tires down. I don't think that we had any of that this race. A lot of guys hit the fence, but I don't think any of them ended up cutting a tire because of it.
It wasn't an issue like it was last year. But I made sure that we did not get any right side damage to make it to the end, and the guys were on my case the whole time making sure I didn't.
Q. As Kerry pointed out, one of two drivers to win a championship from Texas. Talk about the transition, making the trip from Texas to Charlotte to make this happen in your career.
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, I was very fortunate that I met the Ragans when I was racing legends cars. From Texas, we raced legends cars out on the East Coast, three months every summer. That's what I spent my summer vacation as a kid doing. We traveled out to Charlotte, we raced 40 to 60 races in that period of time, and we stayed very busy, worked very hard to make sure that we were able to be competitive in all those races, and you know, through that and through a black flag I received for rough driving one week, I was fortunate enough to meet Ken Ragan and got to know David at the same time as David was getting his break over at Roush and started driving the 6 truck with Mark Martin on that part-time basis. Got to the point where we got to be good friends.
Ken got to a point where he said, man, we want to help you. We'd like to see you make this. I think you can do it. But you've got to move to Charlotte. He told me family that, and I'm like, man, we can't. I have two younger sisters out in Texas, both very heavily involved in after-school activities. Their lives are out there. I can't expect them to uproot for myself.
So my parents told me we weren't going to be able to do it, and Ken said, well, why don't you just move in with us. He said, David just moved out and he said, you can just take his bedroom and just keep up with the yard and make sure it's mowed and kept up nice, and we'll see what we can do to give you a hand. So I left the house at just before 16 years old and moved out to Charlotte. Home schooled through what was the rest of – what was left of my high school years, went and got a GED, and pretty much did whatever I could to stay racing. I worked in David Ragan's shop. I helped on his late model legends cars, and they really helped me get to this point. They really gave me an opportunity that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
I've got to thank my parents for being gracious enough to let me move away from home at 16 years old. That was tough on them. But I think after today, they know it was well worth it.
Q. I don't know if you heard Jack, but he said you might do full-time Cup, you might do part-time Cup. You've talked about wanting to be patient in your development, but what do you feel like you need to learn before you really want to be a full-time Cup driver?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I think if you look and realize that Cup drivers come down to the XFINITY level every race, there's always something to be learned, and they know that, and that's why they do it. To me, I mean, that's part of just seat time. You've got to learn everything you can every race. There's always something different about a racetrack. There's similarities between the two race cars. Now, like Jack was talking about with the rules as close as they are now, there are things that we can bounce back and forth. There's always something to learn. Every time you get in a race car, you figure out something.
So I've been clear, I'm not in a rush. If it comes around and that's the first I've heard of that, by the way, so it's kind of like the radio interview where Jack said something four months ago and I found out from my dad. But you know, if that's what it brings, then I'll do my best to prepare for it and be ready, and if not, we'll go try and double up on these XFINITY championships.
Right now we're living in the moment, and that's a big weight off our shoulders. We get to calm down a little bit, get to celebrate, get to enjoy the banquet, going to do some offshore fishing while we're down here in Florida, and get ready for 2016.
Q. Kyle Larson said that he didn't do a burnout today after winning the race because he felt like it was your weekend, it was your moment to celebrate the championship. Really humbling to hear that, and I was just wondering your thoughts on that.
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, I noticed that I never heard him do anything, and that's a class act right there. That's pretty neat. You know, in the same sense, it was his weekend, too. His isn't over. He earned the right to do whatever he would have liked, and you know, I really appreciate it, but he did a heck of a job. They were fast today, and they showed that they were able to pull this thing off. So congratulations to him on winning the race. It's neat to hear. I didn't realize that.
Q. Second championship in four years, the other one was the ARCA title in 2012. Can you talk about the Roulo brothers there, just the progression that you had with them racing in 2011, and then winning the championship in 2012, just what did you take out of that experience to get you to where you are today?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I think at the time, ARCA was the best stepping-stone to get into one of the three NASCAR series, the major series, and I learned so much racing, racing with the Roulo brothers. In the shop we worked 90 hours a week during the summer months trying to make sure that we had race cars on track and ready to go.
You know, something that we learned from the two full-time years was just making sure that we were there every race. You can't go to a racetrack and have a malfunction. You can't afford to skip over something in the shop. You can't afford to make a stupid mistake and find yourself three laps down.
Our championship year in 2012 in ARCA, we finished every lap of competition that there was to be had. We never finished a lap down. We never had a DNF, and that made us realize real quick, that is a huge part of points racing, and in the grand scheme of things, it's a huge part of racing in general. You can't afford to wreck race cars. It doesn't do anybody any good for points or for that race.
And so, you know, there's times to be patient and there's times to get aggressive, and I learned real quick that there was a difference in those periods. We had to make sure that we were smart about it all year in 2015 to get to where we're at now.
Just so much little stuff like that as I was growing up in the sport and learning how to drive stock cars I learned from the Roulo brothers at that time period. I'm really confident to say I could disassemble a race car down to a bare chassis and put it back together because of that. It's all things that you learn and understand and makes you appreciate the amount of work that goes into these race cars. The amount of time to get a car ready for a race weekend is absolutely unreal, and when you know all that, you try really hard not to wreck them.
Q. Did you have an anxious moment at all when the three guys that you were racing too many the wave-around to get back to the lead lap and you came to pit road and had to race for the lucky dog?
CHRIS BUESCHER: A little bit. I didn't know that they took a very different strategy, and when looking back at it, it was them on older tires. We had our stickers. And honestly, the 42 was so fast, there wasn't a huge chance of them being able to pull off the victory and get the bonus points that would have put us in jeopardy. Even with us being on a different lap, I think we were still 11th on that restart, and there was only one other car that we were racing for the lucky dog, so we'd have been 12th at worst in that scenario, and our clinch spot was 13th. So from a points standpoint, no, it wasn't that bad. I mean, I knew we were in decent shape. I was just trying to get them to feed me as much information as possible so that I knew where we were at and what we had needed to do, who we needed to race. That was probably the toughest part with the pace that Kyle set, both Kyles. It was hard to figure out who was one lap down, two, and on the lead lap. It was a very fast-paced race.
Q. You referenced earlier the black flag experience, and that kind of set you up with a meeting with Ken Reagan. I have not heard that story, so how did that transpire and what did you do and how did it go to that point?
CHRIS BUESCHER: So I don't know how in-depth I want to get on this story.
Q. How bad were you?
CHRIS BUESCHER: It wasn't that bad. I got black flagged one week for rough driving at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Quarter mile front stretch, legends cars. Everyone knows it's a contact sport there. You've got to do all you can do to make spots up. It was not the only time I got black flagged for rough driving there.
I got sat out a week later on, maybe the next year. I got to sit in the tower and watch the race. I said, Man, if I'm not allowed to race can I come sit with you guys in the tower? I don't think they liked me asking that, but they let me.
But the original incident, I don't remember what exactly happened. It was a heat race, and I went over to the 600 – my crew chief at the time was already good friends with the Ragans, had grew up with them and knew them, and I think Ken might have dropped a bug in his ear. He said, You need to bring him over and let me talk to him; I'll settle him right down.
That he did, after a several-hour conversation, which conversation would imply that I was getting to talk back.
But it was a learning experience, and for me I was 12 or 13 right then. It made me realize that there's a time to go and there's a time to be patient, and from there on out, I got a little bit cleaner, was still able to be aggressive but knew the time and place, and I think that helped a lot. I got to be good friends with the Ragan family from there.
Like I said, when I moved in with Ken and Beverly, David's parents, his older brother Adam, they basically let me fit right into the family and go work at David's shop. I had to be home at 7:30 to eat dinner every night. The shop was 300 feet down the road, so I either had to walk or ride a bike. But it was fun. I mean, that's what everyone wants to do right there is do everything they can to get to this point, and I enjoyed every second of it.
THE MODERATOR: Chris, congratulations on this championship. Enjoy it. You deserve it, and continued best of luck in NASCAR.
Results
| Pos | No. | Driver | Make | Start | Laps | Led | Status | Points |
| 1 | 42 | Kyle Larson | Chevy | 9 | 200 | 118 | Running | 0 |
| 2 | 33 | Austin Dillon | Chevy | 3 | 200 | 16 | Running | 0 |
| 3 | 20 | Erik Jones | Toyota | 7 | 200 | 1 | Running | 0 |
| 4 | 2 | Brian Scott | Chevy | 4 | 200 | 0 | Running | 40 |
| 5 | 22 | Ryan Blaney | Ford | 5 | 200 | 0 | Running | 39 |
| 6 | 18 | Daniel Suarez | Toyota | 2 | 200 | 0 | Running | 38 |
| 7 | 3 | Ty Dillon | Chevy | 10 | 200 | 0 | Running | 37 |
| 8 | 9 | Chase Elliott | Chevy | 13 | 200 | 0 | Running | 36 |
| 9 | 7 | Regan Smith | Chevy | 14 | 200 | 0 | Running | 35 |
| 10 | 6 | Darrell Wallace Jr | Ford | 21 | 200 | 0 | Running | 34 |
| 11 | 60 | Chris Buescher | Ford | 11 | 200 | 0 | Running | 33 |
| 12 | 98 | Aric Almirola | Ford | 6 | 199 | 0 | Running | 0 |
| 13 | 1 | Elliott Sadler | Ford | 8 | 199 | 0 | Running | 31 |
| 14 | 39 | Ryan Sieg | Chevy | 16 | 199 | 0 | Running | 30 |
| 15 | 43 | Dakoda Armstrong | Ford | 19 | 199 | 0 | Running | 29 |
| 16 | 01 | Landon Cassill | Chevy | 20 | 199 | 0 | Running | 28 |
| 17 | 16 | Ryan Reed | Ford | 17 | 199 | 0 | Running | 27 |
| 18 | 8 | Blake Koch | Toyota | 25 | 199 | 0 | Running | 26 |
| 19 | 4 | Ross Chastain | Chevy | 24 | 199 | 0 | Running | 25 |
| 20 | 88 | Ben Rhodes | Chevy | 18 | 198 | 0 | Running | 24 |
| 21 | 28 | J.J. Yeley | Toyota | 15 | 198 | 0 | Running | 23 |
| 22 | 51 | Jeremy Clements | Chevy | 22 | 198 | 0 | Running | 22 |
| 23 | 62 | Brendan Gaughan | Chevy | 12 | 198 | 0 | Running | 21 |
| 24 | 0 | Harrison Rhodes | Chevy | 28 | 197 | 0 | Running | 20 |
| 25 | 44 | David Starr | Toyota | 33 | 197 | 0 | Running | 19 |
| 26 | 97 | Mason Mingus | Chevy | 26 | 195 | 0 | Running | 0 |
| 27 | 55 | Anthony Kumpen | Chevy | 30 | 193 | 0 | Running | 17 |
| 28 | 70 | Garrett Smithley | Chevy | 34 | 192 | 0 | Running | 0 |
| 29 | 24 | Eric McClure | Toyota | 36 | 190 | 0 | Running | 15 |
| 30 | 54 | Kyle Busch | Toyota | 1 | 185 | 64 | Accident | 0 |
| 31 | 40 | Josh Reaume | Chevy | 37 | 185 | 0 | Running | 13 |
| 32 | 52 | Joey Gase | Chevy | 29 | 180 | 0 | Ignition | 12 |
| 33 | 74 | Timothy Viens | Dodge | 40 | 156 | 0 | Running | 0 |
| 34 | 90 | Mario Gosselin | Chevy | 31 | 88 | 0 | Suspension | 10 |
| 35 | 13 | Derek White | Dodge | 39 | 81 | 0 | Engine | 9 |
| 36 | 15 | Carlos Contreras | Chevy | 38 | 59 | 0 | Engine | 8 |
| 37 | 14 | Mike Bliss | Toyota | 23 | 44 | 1 | Vibration | 8 |
| 38 | 92 | B J McLeod | Chevy | 32 | 36 | 0 | Vibration | 0 |
| 39 | 26 | T.J. Bell | Toyota | 35 | 23 | 0 | Vibration | 0 |
| 40 | 19 | Jeff Green | Toyota | 27 | 3 | 0 | Transmission | 4 |