Christian Eckes Completes a Perfect Run at Nashville

A Perfect Game in baseball is when a team doesn’t record a single hit and doesn’t get on base throughout the game, in Friday night’s Craftsman Truck Series race at Nashville Superspeedway, we had the equivalent of that. Christian Eckes would lead every single lap of the 150-lap race to secure his third win of the season. Eckes also secured the third and final $50K Prize from the Triple Truck Challenge. This was the first time a driver had led every race lap in 12 years.

Eckes would ultimately take the checkered flag 2.028 seconds ahead of his teammate Daniel Dye – the runner-up showing a career-best effort. Corey Heim passed Rajah Caruth on the final lap for a third-place finish, while Tyler Ankrum finished in fifth.

“Can’t say enough about these guys,” said Eckes, “We were really motivated to get this truck out there. Nice job for the day,” added Eckes, who says he can’t ever remember leading every lap in any race he’s competed in.”

“I saw the 11 (Heim) has four of them [wins] so got a little upset walking in [to Nashville Superspeedway], so now another one to go catch another one,” Eckes said.

Grant Enfinger, Ben Rhodes, Matt Mills, Ty Majeski, and Jake Garcia rounded out the top 10 in the final results. 

Nick Sanchez started from the rear after smacking the wall in qualifying and would rally to a 13th-place finish. He also is third in the standings back by 89 points.

Former NASCAR Cup Series star and current FOX Sports NASCAR broadcaster Clint Bowyer finished 17th after his No. 7 Spire Chevrolet suffered damage when the field stacked up on a Lap 60 restart.

“We fought loose in the whole time from the word go, but I know from a lot of years of experience that’s hard to overcome,” said Bowyer. “I don’t know what happened on the restart, they all checked up in front of me and I crashed,” Bowyer said, adding, “I will be back. I promise you there’s no way I’m ending on that.”

Three races remain to set the 10-driver Playoff field. Currently, Tanner Gray sits in the 10th-place and final position, 14 points ahead of Daniel Dye.

The Trucks head next to Pocono Raceway on July 12^th at 5:30 pm EST.