NEWTON, Iowa – Driving his guts out with a restart with seven laps remaining in Friday night’s M&M’s 200 presented by Casey’s General Stores, Brandon Jones earned his best finish in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in nearly two years driving for MDM Motorsports at Iowa Speedway.
When the final caution of the night waved with 13 laps remaining, most of the field elected to duck down to pit road for fresh tires and an adjustment for a short run to the checkered flag.
On the restart, Jones emerged from a four-wide hornet’s nest of trucks in third and held off challengers Grant Enfinger and Christopher Bell to earn his second top-10 finish of the year.
“I felt like our Soleus Air Chevy was a strong truck from the drop of the green flag tonight,” said Jones. “Track position was key the whole race, and it got to where you really couldn’t pass anyone once the field got strung out. Shane Huffman made a great call to take four tires there with just a handful of laps left and that was really the difference that let us get up there in the mix.
“If we would’ve had just a few more laps, I think we definitely could’ve had something for them. It was a great finish, though, and I’m really excited for tomorrow’s XFINITY Series race.”
MDM Motorsports crew chief Shane Huffman was equally thrilled about the team’s performance Friday night.
“We finally showed what were made of, we had a very fast Soleus Air Chevy Silverado,” said Huffman. “We fought track position all night and everyone was fighting a tight aero balance in traffic.”
While teams took varying tire strategies to duke it out for the checkered flag, Huffman kept a wear on tires throughout the race and knew they needed four to square off for the end.
“We decided to put four on our last stop because the lefts were actually wearing more than rights and a bunch of guys took two, so that was a huge factor in our finish,” he added. “I’m so proud of everyone on this MDM Motorsports team and Brandon for fighting all night.”
For MDM, the finish was redemption after being forced to miss last weekend’s Truck Series race at Gateway Motorsports Park after the team suffered heavy suspension parts damage to many their parts the week prior at Texas Motor Speedway when Timothy Peters got collected in a last-lap crash. The contact between Austin Wayne Self and Peters sent the team’s No. 99 Chevrolet through the infield grass, where the splitter dug in and send the truck into a flip along the fronstretch grass.
“This race was huge for us after the Texas race ending,” added Huffman. “We made a tough decision not to run Gateway in order to get our legs under us and better prepare for the rest of the year. We expect to run like this the rest of the year. We have a very capable team.”
Jones will return to the seat for MDM in the series’ next race at Kentucky Speedway for a Thursday night showdown on July 6.
Last month, Jones finished sixth at Dover (Del.) International Speedway in his second start of the season for the Matt Miller-owned team. Overall, Jones has amassed six top-five and 13 top-10 runs in 33 career starts.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
