NASCAR: Erik Jones earns first 1.5-mile win in Truck Series at Las Vegas - MotorSportsTalk

Mere hours after his boss triumphed in the Nationwide Series at Dover International Speedway, Erik Jones has claimed his second win of the season for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

Jones passed KBM teammate Darrell Wallace Jr. with 13 laps to go in the Rhino Linings 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before beating him to the stripe by 1.329 seconds.

Prior to tonight, Jones’ previous two wins in the Truck Series had come on tracks of one mile or shorter.

“It was a blast – I learned a ton,” the 18-year-old driver told Fox Sports. “To get a win on a mile-and-a-half is awesome. It drove so good at the end. I couldn’t ask for more than this right here.

“I wanted to win out here so bad. I had this marked down as one I was looking forward to. Who doesn’t want to win in Vegas? This is really surreal to me right now.”

For a while, it appeared that Wallace would be the winner tonight in Las Vegas. He took control of the race around Lap 50 when he dusted Timothy Peters for the lead after Peters wiggled high off of Turn 2.

The race’s middle stages progressed with “Bubba” at the front, and he cycled back to P1 following a round of green-flag stops that started with about 40 laps left.

But Jones had been able to move up to second past Matt Crafton in the cycle, and then set his sights on Wallace before taking the lead for good with an inside pass.

“It’s frustrating,” Wallace said after his fifth runner-up finish of 2014 and his second in as many races. “I hate finishing second so bad. Thanks to my guys, though…Thought it was ours, that’s the most frustrating thing.

“To see where we came out [after the stops] and we passed him on the exit of pit road, I thought we’d be fine – and he just ran us down fast.”

Crafton, the defending Truck Series champion, finished third but was able to extend his current points lead to 19 over teammate Johnny Sauter, who finished 14th.

Peters, the Vegas winner from one year ago, picked up a fourth-place finish – his first Top-5 run in the last nine events. Brian Ickler rounded the Top 5 finishers.

The Truck Series will resume action in two weeks time at Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 18.

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An IndyCar executive said there is “absolutely” disappointment that its long-awaited video game recently was delayed beyond its target date, but the series remains optimistic about the new title.

“Well, I don’t know how quick it will be, but the whole situation is important to us,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said during a news conference Monday morning to announce IndyCar’s NTT title sponsorship. “Motorsport Games has spent a lot of money, a lot of effort to create an IndyCar title. What we’ve seen of that effort, which is not completely obvious, is very reassuring.

“I think it’s going to be outstanding. That’s our shared objective, that when it is released, it’s just widely accepted. A great credit both to IndyCar racing, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, something that our fans love.”

In June 2021, IndyCar announced a new partnership with Motorsport Games to create and distribute an IndyCar video game for the PC and Xbox and PlayStation consoles in 2023.

But during an earnings call last week, Motorsport Games said the IndyCar game had been delayed to 2024 to ensure high quality.

Somewhat compounding the delay is that IndyCar’s license for iRacing expired after the end of the 2022 season because of its exclusive agreement with Motorsport Games.

That’s resulted in significant changes for IndyCar on iRacing, which had provided a high-profile way for the series to stay visible during its 2020 shutdown from the pandemic. (Players still can race an unbranded car but don’t race on current IndyCar tracks, nor can they stream).

That’s helped ratchet up the attention on having a video game outlet for IndyCar.

“I wish we had an IndyCar title 10 years ago,” said Miles, who has been working with the organization since 2013. “We’ve been close, but we’ve had these I think speed bumps.”

IndyCar is hopeful the Motorsports Game edition will be ready at the start of 2024. Miles hinted that beta versions could be unveiled to reporters ahead of the time “to begin to show the progress in a narrow way to make sure we’ve got it right, to test the progress so that we’re ready when they’re ready.”

It’s been nearly 18 years since the release of the most recent IndyCar video game for console or PC.

“(We) better get it right,” Miles said. “It’s something we’re very close to and continue to think about what it is to make sure we get it over the line in due course.”