| | Associated Press
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Pole-sitter Greg Biffle regained the lead with 36 laps to go and held on to win the rain-delayed NASCAR Trucks Pronto Auto Parts 400 on Friday night.
Biffle took the lead for good on lap 131 when he first passed
Roush teammate Kurt Busch and then went high on the backstretch at
Texas Motor Speedway to overtake Mike Wallace. Biffle beat Wallace
to the finish by 2.741 seconds.
In addition to winning his 11th career NASCAR Craftsman Trucks
race, Biffle took the series points lead from Jack Sprague, who
beat him for the 1999 points championship by just eight points. It
was Biffle's fifth straight top-5 finish.
Sprague, who had nine straight top-5 finishes, was knocked out
of the race after losing control of his truck and being hit when he
went sideways on the backstretch on lap 122.
On the restart after the last caution, on lap 160, Busch tried
to pass Biffle on the outside going into Turn 3. Biffle made a
quick move to close the door and continued to build on his lead
after that.
Busch, the runner-up to Biffle at Pikes Peak last month, went on
to finish sixth. He lost ground after he went high and hit the wall
on the backstretch on lap 161.
Randy Tolsma finished third, followed by Andy Houston and Bryan
Reffner.
The start of the 167-lap race was delayed 2 hours, 15 minutes
after heavy rains late in the afternoon. There were still some
obvious wet spots on the track right after the race started, but
they didn't seem to affect the race.
Biffle, with his third pole of the season, needed only 10 laps
to catch up with the back end of the field. He was still in the
lead as the first caution flag came out on lap 30 when Jay Stewart
rear-ended fellow Texan Patrick Lawyer, sustaining heavy damage to
his front end that knocked him out of the race.
But on the first lap after the opening caution, lap 36, Wallace
took over the lead going inside on Turn 3 to overtake Biffle.
Sprague, the points leader in the NASCAR trucks series with nine
straight top-5 finishes, took advantage of the first caution to
move up two spots to third after making a pit stop of less than 10
seconds.
But Sprague was knocked out of the race with 45 laps to go when
he lost control in the second turn, spun sideways in the center of
the track and was hit by Rob Morgan, who started on the front row
by Biffle. Morgan also left the race.
Defending Pronto Auto Parts champion Dennis Setzer, a Texas
native who started third, was still on the lead lap in 21st place
when his engine blew on lap 57 and ended his night in 33rd in the
37-car field.
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ALSO SEE
NASCAR Trucks Pronto Auto Parts results
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