Chandler Smith easily won Saturday night’s NASCAR Truck Series race at Richmond Raceway, dominating the second playoff race by leading the final 175 laps around the short track.
The Kyle Busch Motorsports driver beat teammate John Hunter Nemechek by 2.7 seconds to score his third victory of the season and his second in the last three events.
Smith’s win came on a night where, aside from the two stage cautions, the yellow flag came out only once for an incident of any kind. As a result, only 14 trucks finished on the lead lap.
The victory came a week after Smith and his wife had their first child.
“The blessing keep stacking up,” Smith told Fox Sports 1.
The top five was completed by Stage 1 winner Ty Majeski, Indianapolis Raceway Park winner Grant Enfinger and Corey Heim.
Majeski led a career-best 73 laps. Through two playoff races he’s led 144 laps.
Click here for the race results.
Of the 10 playoff drivers, the only one to not finish on the lead lap was defending champion Ben Rhodes. He placed 18th, two laps down.
Majeski controlled the first stage of the race, leading every lap and putting half the field – 18 trucks – a lap down. He wound up winning the stage by five seconds over Nemechek.
The top five was completed by Smith, Stewart Friesen and Enfinger.
During the break, Majeski was third out of the pits behind Smith and Nemechek after a slow stop which saw his jackman trip, fall and be nudged by Majeski’s truck as he came to a stop in his stall.
Ty Majeski describes what he saw when his jackman tripped in front of his truck on a pit stop Saturday night: pic.twitter.com/bHkHnzmOnt
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) August 14, 2022
Smith kept the lead on the Lap 80 restart.
Like the first stage, Stage 2 went caution free as Smith led every lap and beat Nemechek by 4.1 seconds.
Under the caution, Smith was first off pit road ahead of Nemechek, Enfinger, Majeski and Taylor Gray. The race resumed with 99 laps left as Smith shot out to the lead.
The closest challenge Smith would get over the next 50 laps was with 40 to go when Smith nearly turned the lapped truck of Layne Griggs as they exited Turn 4. This allowed Nemechek to pounce and they were briefly three-wide out of Turn 2 before Smith pulled back ahead.
The first adn only caution for cause came with 36 laps left. It occurred when Carson Hocevar, who was seconds from being lapped by Smith, made contact with and wrecked Nick Leitz in Turn 1. Leitz was 34th and seven laps down at the time of the accident.
“My fault, I guess,” said Hocevar, who finished 10th. “I was looking left and didn’t see him cross my nose. …. I didn’t mean to do that, obviously. We were so bad it didn’t matter.”
https://t.co/Bhpot2Gi6T pic.twitter.com/GGy1YYnuYk
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) August 14, 2022
During the caution, Smith was first off pit road ahead of Nemechek, Majeski and Enfinger.
The race resumed with 28 laps to go as Smith easily secured the lead.
The Truck Series is now off for the next three weeks. It will conclude its first playoff round on Sept. 9 at Kansas Speedway.