{"id":37132,"date":"2017-02-27T11:27:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T19:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=37132"},"modified":"2017-02-27T11:27:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T19:27:32","slug":"kaz-krala-escapes-with-nextera-250-daytona-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/kaz-krala-escapes-with-nextera-250-daytona-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaz Krala Escapes with NextEra 250 Daytona Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kaz
Kaz Grala celebrates in Victory Lane. (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona had a spectacular finish, with trucks flipping, flying and spinning on the white flag lap when a virtual unknown, 18-year old Kaz Krala, drove through the backstretch smoke to become Daytona\u2019s youngest winner in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series.<\/p>\n

It was a whirlwind kind of day for the Boston, Mass., GMS Racing Chevrolet Silverado driver, who won the pole in his initial Daytona outing at 180.676 mph.\u00a0 By winning, he becomes the first playoff driver for the post season in the truck series.<\/p>\n

The race started pretty much the same way it finished – with a major crash on lap two, involving 17 trucks that suffered some sort of damage; that said, nothing could compare to the finish.<\/p>\n

\"Kaz
Austin Cindric spins during the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With just half of a lap to go, Grant Enfinger pushed his ThorSport teammate Ben Rhodes very hard in the outside lane, up to a point where he lost control, swerving high and then low right into the leader, Matt Crafton, and taking out defending series champion Johnny Sauter and Timothy Peters.<\/p>\n

Crafton went airborne, briefly rolling backwards and starting the melee, with trucks spinning everywhere. A clear lane opened up just long enough for Krala, Austin Wayne Self, Chase Briscoe and the father\u2013son combination\u00a0 of John Hunter Nemechek and Joe Nemechek in fourth and fifth to slip through to get back the finish line.<\/p>\n

\"DAYTONA
DAYTONA BEACH, FL – FEBRUARY 24: Kaz Grala, driver of the #33 KiklosGreekExtraVirginOliveOil Chevrolet, celebrates in Victory Lane by putting a winner’s sticker on his truck during the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway on February 24, 2017 in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Photo by Jerry Markland\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThat was a crazy finish to the race for sure,\u201d said an excited Krala.\u00a0 \u201cMy radio actually came unplugged towards the end of the race, so I was a little bit nervous and frantic at the end. \u00a0But I got it plugged in, thankfully, and at the very end of the race, I’m really glad I did.\u00a0 My spotter Eddie D’Hondt helped me through that one big time.\u00a0 I’m really happy to have been able to do that (escape the accident).<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just pushing Timothy Peters. \u00a0I couldn’t really see much ahead of me, but I did see stuff start to go wrong.\u00a0 And I knew I wasn’t going to lift out of the throttle, so I just tugged the wheel left, crossed my fingers, closed my eyes a little bit, and I’m really glad it worked out.\u00a0 That was pretty hectic at the end. \u00a0We had a little bit of luck, but we had a really fast Kiklos Chevy for sure.\u00a0 That’s what it takes. \u00a0Get a fast truck to be up front, put yourself in these positions, and these kinds of things happen.\u00a0 I can’t be more proud of them and happy to be able to run the whole season with these guys.\u00a0 I certainly didn’t envision it going this way at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krala now has a 14-points lead in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series with his victory, followed by Johnny Sauter, the winner of the first two segments and two playoff points.\u00a0 Ben Rhodes is third, Joe Nemechek is fourth and Austin Wayne Self rounds out the top five.<\/p>\n

The next truck race will be at the Atlanta Motor Speedway for the running of the Active Pest Control 200 on Saturday, March 4 airing on FS1.<\/p>\n

\"Kaz
Kaz Grala celebrates with a burnout. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona had a spectacular finish, with trucks flying and spinning on the white flag lap when a virtual unknown, 18-year old Kaz Krala, became Daytona\u2019s youngest winner in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":37136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3424,3470,5029,22],"tags":[547,5194,127,4677,41,1632],"class_list":["post-37132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-news","category-racing","category-event-coverage","tag-jay-wells","tag-kaz-krala","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-camping-truck-world-series","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/DIS_NCWTS_VL_2_0224172.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-9EU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37137,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37132\/revisions\/37137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}