FORT WORTH, TX. – It’s a good bet that John Hunter Nemechek will be sporting a big smile when he returns to Texas Motor Speedway for Friday’s SpeedyCash.com 220 (8:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Nemechek is the defending winner of the track’s Camping World Truck Series race and won a NASCAR Xfinity Series race at the Fort Worth 1.5-miler as well last season. He trails championship leader and reigning series champ Ben Rhodes by 20 points in a tightly contested run for the 2022 Camping World Truck Series regular season title.
The top three drivers – Rhodes, Nemechek and three-race winner Zane Smith are separated by only 21 points. Chandler Smith is in fourth place in the driver standings, only 29 points back form the lead.
Zane Smith arrives in the Lone Star state after a dominating victory last weekend in Kansas – leading 108 of the 134 laps. He is the only multi-time winner in the series in 2022 and brings a promising Texas resume to the track this weekend too scoring top-10 finishes in all three previous starts there.
In fact, Rhodes, Nemechek and Zane Smith all boast top-3 finishes at Texas – Rhodes was runner-up in 2018, Nemechek is the defending race winner and Zane Smith was third in 2020.
With Zane Smith’s three-win tally this season and the fact only four fulltime drivers have won a race – Rhodes, Nemechek and Chandler Smith – there remains six Playoff positions for championship eligible drivers and eight races to formally set that Playoff field.
And this weekend presents a challenging lineup with a handful of savvy part-time veterans set to take the green flag vying against the title eligible.
Former series champion Todd Bodine – Texas’s all-time winningest Truck Series driver (six victories) – will be racing the No. 62 Halmar Friesen Chevrolet along with this season’s two-time NASCAR Cup Series winner, Ross Chastain (No. 41 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet) and Ryan Preece, who is 3-for-3 in top 10s driving a partial Truck Series schedule in 2022. This will be his Texas Truck Series debut in the always-competitive No. 17 DGR Ford.
Source: Holly Cain / NASCAR Wire Service
