Sauter Wins the Camping World Truck Series Championship, While William Byron Wins Ford EcoBoost 200

  With Homestead-Miami Speedway being known as a track that’s eats away at your car towards the end, the last 20 laps of the Ford EcoBoost 200 provided drama to kickoff Ford Championship Weekend.

  While hanging behind defending champion Matt Crafton for most of the night, Johnny Saulter finally got ahead of the 88 truck and pulled away to finish third overall but went home with the Camping World Truck Series Championship. William Byron was the first to cross the finish line with a checkered flag.

  “It’s not just me it’s the whole team, everyone at GMS racing.” Sauter said in to Fox Sports in the televised post-race interview. “We qualified bad today, and really I was kind of worried about it. I felt pretty good at race trim, but I couldn’t be prouder of everyone.”

  After leading the Championship 4 for most of the race, Matt Crafton saw his time in front come to end and quickly faded towards the back fighting with Christopher Bell and Timothy Peters. Crafton second in points (seventh in the race) for the season, followed by Chrisopher Bell (eighth in the race) and Timothy Peters (ninth in the race).

  “I kind of figured it was a matter of time. We were just really bad on that last run for whaterver reason.” Crafton said regarding his late race slip. “We just went the wrong way for whatever reason. It just got really tight on that last run. The run before that was just a little bit free, and on that last run it just got really tight on entry.”

  With a record setting seven wins for a rookie, the victory helped secure William Byron secure the Sunoco Rookie of the Year and Kyle Busch the Owner’s Championship.

  “Well, if he stayed on my path, he'd be a hell of a lot more successful than he's going to be.” Team owner Kyle Busch said, overcome with bittersweet emotion. “But he's going to do his own deal, so I wish him all the best. But truthfully, with the way that William and Rudy [Crew Chief Ryan Fugle] have both executed this year, especially with William, with him kind of being as fresh as he is and not having the experience that some of these other guys have, and to have him go out there and really excel and absorb and really take the series by storm this year has been really fun to watch. It's kind of scary to be teaching him all the things that I'm teaching him, but I was done about three weeks ago telling him any more.”

  Despite a not so pleasant result, Bell had a positive outlook on his performance.

  “So this is the second time I've raced here, and second time that I've started the race really bad.” Bell said about what he learned from Homestead. “We definitely got a lot better than what we did last year towards the end of the race. Just seat time here is everything. I'm pretty good buddies with Kyle Larson, and I don't think there's anybody better here than Kyle. Just being able to talk to him, and he kind of gave me some pointers on how to run the wall here, and he's just-- it takes seat time.”

  The exciting truck race set the stage for a weekend full of championship contenders, with plenty of drama.