Tyler Reddick picks up Texas pole for tonight's NASCAR Trucks race - MotorSportsTalk

Tyler Reddick won out after a frantic ending to NASCAR Camping World Truck Series qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway ahead of tonight’s Winstar World Casino and Resort 350.

No one from the final round group of 12 drivers chose to head out onto the 1.5-mile oval until there was less than one minute remaining in the five-minute session. Johnny Sauter led a mad dash out of the pits, and all 12 drivers were able to make the start/finish line before time expired so they could log an official Round 3 lap.

In the end, it was Reddick, driving the No. 19 Ford F-150, that earned his second Truck Series pole in the last three races with a lap of 181.959 miles per hour.

“With how this qualifying is, it’s kind of a madhouse – you go and get out of your box as quick as you can, go sit in pit road for four minutes, and just wait until [you see] who’s gonna be the first one to move,” Reddick told Fox Sports. “We wanted to be way up there in case no one did get a lap, but once everyone went with plenty of time to go, it was all about getting the right gap.

“Once we were rolling down the backstretch – some people were probably thinking where they were at, they were not going to make it back [to start/finish] – I got enough time to make it back, so I just tried to get as big a gap as I could.

“The 20 [Brennan Newberry] stumbled a bit off of [Turn] 4, and I was able to take advantage of the draft and I had some clean air where I needed it most where lots of times you get really tight behind another vehicle.”

Starting alongside him on the front row will be Sprint Cup regular Kyle Busch, who has won six times in the No. 51 Toyota Tundra this year – and all four times he’s raced on a 1.5-mile oval like Texas (Kansas, Charlotte, Kentucky, Chicago).

Defending Truck Series champion and current points leader Matt Crafton will start tonight’s race in third with Ben Kennedy on his outside in Row 2. Crafton’s main rivals for this year’s title, Darrell Wallace Jr. and Ryan Blaney, will start in eighth and ninth respectively.

Green flag for the 147-lap event is scheduled to drop shortly after 8:30 p.m. ET this Halloween evening.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

Tyler Reddick picks up Texas pole for tonight’s NASCAR Trucks race

Hunter Lawrence defends Haiden Deegan after controversial block pass at Detroit

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