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Hornaday wins at Memphis Motorsports Park

Jun 29, 2008 - 5:14 AM MEMPHIS, Tennessee (Ticker) -- Ron Hornaday Jr. keeps adding to his record victory total.

Hornaday won his record 36th career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race by taking the checkered flag in Saturday's O'Reilly 200 at Memphis Motorsports Park.

In a Chevrolet Silverado, the 50-year-old Hornaday collected his third Trucks win of 2008 with an average speed of 86.617 miles per hour.

"This was probably the hardest race I've run this year by far," Hornaday said.

The 11-year veteran pulled away from Erik Darnell on the fourth green-white-checkered finish this season after a multi-truck wreck brought out the red flag three laps from the end of 200 regulation laps.

It was the second career victory here for the three-time series champion, who also won the initial Craftsman event at Memphis in 1998.

"Winning this thing is awesome because we've had it taken away from us in many different scenarios," Hornaday said.

Hornaday, whose winning purse was $57,100, moved into first place in the official driver standings, taking over the top spot from Johnny Benson, who started on the pole.

Benson's Toyota went to the garage early with a transmission problem causing him to finish 33rd place. He fell to fourth in the standings, 56 points behind Hornaday.

Darnell, who won the Cool City Customs 200 in Michigan two weeks ago, finished 0.269 seconds behind Hornaday in a Ford F-150 for his fifth top-five finish of the year.

"Second place is frustrating," Darnell said. "This is my second second-place finish in three starts here. We've been really close here before and I've always had good runs. We really had a good truck tonight."

Matt Crafton was third in a Chevrolet Silverado while Rick Crawford finished fourth in a Ford.

Crafton is now second in the championship standings, 27 points behind Hornaday.

"Our truck was awesome," Crafton said. "We knew it was good for the long run. We've got to start qualifying better and then we definitely can give Hornaday a run for the money."

David Starr came in fifth in a Toyota, just ahead of the Toyota of two-time Memphis race winner Jack Sprague.