He was wrong, as he held off a furious late-race charge by Joey Logano to earn the first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series of his career in a green-white-checkered finish. Logano, a NASCAR Sprint Cup regular who had much fresher tires on his truck, had to settle for finishing second after spinning his tires on the final restart and permitting Larson to slip away.

“I was pretty nervous on that last restart because Joey was on a lot newer tires than me, and I’m not normally the best on restarts. But I was able to beat him into (Turn 1) and then hold him off for the win,” said Larson, the first Drive for Diversity graduate to reach Victory Lane in one of NASCAR’s three national touring series.

Larson, 20, won in only his fifth career start in the Truck Series and clearly had the fastest truck in the field all day, leading 187 of the race’s 200 laps.

“It’s not often that you get to drive a car that dominant, so I know you’ve got to take advantage of it,” Larson said.

Logano did not make it easy, as saving a set of fresh sticker tires for the end of the race nearly paid off for him.  The only Sprint Cup driver in the field, Logano arrived at the track in time to qualify seventh after racing at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday night and finishing fifth in the Cup race there. His pit crew dropped the jack prematurely on his first pit stop, costing him track position, but he rallied from there and bided his time until he could get the set of tires he needed to make his run toward the front.

Logano was one of only two drivers whose teams saved a set of sticker tires for the end of the race, with defending series champion James Buescher being the other. Logano actually fell one lap down before the fifth caution came out and afforded him the chance to pit for the fresh tires. He subsequently restarted in 18th and nearly got caught up in a wreck when Todd Bodine spun in front of him, but then began a frenzied, determined charge through the field over the final 20 laps.

It took Logano just six laps to gain 11 spots, and by Lap 193, with seven laps remaining, he was riding in second and right on Larson’s bumper. But after an accident involving Timothy Peters brought out the final caution, Larson beat Logano on the green-white-checkered restart and then held him off for the win.

“I was passing a ton of cars on the newer tires,” Logano said. “That’s Rockingham for you. That’s what makes this race track so cool, because you can play a strategy like that. When we got the last caution, I thought it was playing out perfect for us.

“I just got beat (on the restart). I spun my tires, so it was all my fault. I was so mad at myself. I felt like we should have won this race. We might not have had the truck to win, but we had the strategy to win.”

Johnny Sauter, who was attempting to make history by becoming the first driver to win three consecutive races at the start of a Truck Series season, qualified 11th and ran as high as second before settling for a fourth-place finish. Brendan Gaughan finished third behind Larson and Logano, and Chase Elliott rounded out the top five.

Gaughan and Sauter provided much of the mid-race entertainment after a poor pit stop forced Sauter back to 10th. From there, Sauter worked his way back toward the front, passing ThorSport Racing teammate Matt Crafton for third after a spirited battle on Lap 154.

Then Sauter set his sights on Gaughan’s truck. But as Sauter and Gaughan battled lap after lap for second as the laps wound down, Larson began pulling away from them and the rest of the pack.  Two late cautions bunched up the field again, and allowed Logano the opportunity he needed to get fresh tires on his truck, setting up the duel at the finish.

Sauter maintained his lead in the series standings by 16 points over rookie Jeb Burton, who won the pole during Sunday morning qualifying and finished seventh in the race.

“I’m 27 and I’m getting old,” said Busch, after holding off 20-year-old Nationwide Series rookie Kyle Larson in a finish that no doubt aged him slightly.

Larson, making his fourth Nationwide start, trailed Busch by five car lengths with 10 laps to go but went high around lap traffic and traded paint with Busch as the two crossed the finish line .023 seconds apart, making it the second-closest finish ever at Bristol.

“I did everything I could to try to protect the momentum,” Busch said. “A young kid like that, he’s got a lot of talent. He’s obviously made a name for himself. He was running hard, that’s for sure. He brought a lot to the table today and brought his show to the fans. ”

Coming to the finish line, Busch had a decision to make: Maintain the high line or go low around the lap car of Brad Teague.

“There were two thoughts,” Busch said. “You don’t ever want to give anyone the bottom for a cheap shot. Two, I ran the top in (Turns) 1 and 2 and gained so much ground on (Teague), I was afraid I was going to run into the back of him coming off Turn 4 — or I slow down any little bit and it hurts my run. Then Larson might have enough speed on the bottom to beat me back to the line. Knowing that the start-finish line is only halfway down the straightaway, I just needed to lunge off the corner to make it.”

Larson, from Elk Grove, Calif., was happy to see Busch go low.

“I tried a couple of moves on Kyle around the bottle and (my car) was just a little too tight off (the corner) to get back to the throttle,” he said. “The last lap, I was pretty happy he went to the bottom to block a slide-job or whatever. It gave me one more shot to try to get around him and he left me just enough room to squeeze the outside. I just missed it by a couple of feet, but it was a lot of fun.”
Driving the Cottonelle Chevrolet for Turner Scott Motorsports, Larson entered the race simply seeking a solid result after finishing no better than 13th in any of his first three starts.

“We’d kind of been digging ourselves a hole,” he said.

Busch, who started 13th, noted that although Larson didn’t win the race, he won a measure of respect.

“You certainly want to win races the right way,” he said. “Coming up, running races in the Nationwide Series, Cup Series, I didn’t win a lot, but the ones that I did — there’s a way of going about things. There’s the way I did it and the way (Brad) Keselowski did it — ruffling a lot of feathers.

“(Larson) played it smart today. That was good on his end. I think a lot of people have been looking at him to try to see whether he was going to be a wrecker or a checker. Today he didn’t get the checker. That will come. If you’re driving into the corner and driving into the back of me — I’m going to be here for a while. … He’s not going to have fun dealing with me every week. Right now, I’m going to race him as hard as he raced me but just as clean as he raced me.”

Busch, who made NASCAR history at Bristol in 2010 when he became the first driver to win all three national touring events in the same weekend, appears to be in the midst of another potentially dominant weekend. He will sit on the pole for Sunday’s Food City 500 and also turned the fastest laps in both Sprint Cup practice sessions on Saturday.

But Larson turned what looked like a battle between Busch and veteran Kevin Harvick into a three-dog fight.

“I was catching them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got to them,” said Larson, who stayed on the gas as the two leaders battled their way through lap traffic.

Busch led 92 of the first 225 laps, however the run for the money began about Lap 230 when Busch and Harvick approached a five-car group of slower cars. It took nearly 10 laps for the lead duo to clear the pack and, by the time they did, Larson was applying pressure.

Harvick, who led 43 laps, elected to pit under caution with 32 laps remaining. Unable to match Busch’s speed while running low on the track and slated to restart on the inside lane, Harvick elected to take four fresh tires. He restarted eighth and finished fifth.

Brian Vickers and Sam Hornish Jr. finished third and fourth. Hornish extended his series lead to 22 points over Justin Allgaier, the pole-sitter who led the first 62 laps but settled for eighth.

As Stewart dodged the crash and crossed the finish line, the front clip of Larson’s car sheared off, ripping the engine out of its compartment. The front suspension and engine ended up on the walkway at the bottom of the stands.

A tire from Larson’s car also flew into the grandstands.

Regan Smith led as the cars approached the checkered flag, but Smith tried to block Brad Keselowski, who was running second, and turned across the nose of Keselowski’s car.

Daytona International Speedway president Joie Chitwood III indicated that 14 spectators were transported to medical facilities off-property and 14 others were treated on site.

“First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers are with our race fans,” Chitwood said. “On the incident, we responded appropriately according to our safety protocols and had emergency medical personnel at the incident immediately.

“We transported 14 people off property and treated 14 people at our on-track care center.”

Chitwood referred questions about the conditions of the injured fans to Halifax Medical Center.

“I’d have to refer you to Halifax for any of the conditions of the patients,” Chitwood said.

Byron Cogdell, spokesperson from Halifax Health, said seven spectators had been transported to Halifax Medical with injuries related to the accident, five more spectators for other issues. Two of the injured spectators, one adult and one child, were in critical condition, though all patients were listed as stable.

The adult who was in critical condition was suffering from head trauma, Cogdell said. Halifax has not released the names of the injured pending notification of and consent from their families.

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing operations, said all drivers involved in the last-lap crash had been treated and released from the infield care center.

As Chitwood and O’Donnell spoke, and with Sunday’s Daytona 500 17 hours away, track workers continued the process of repairing the fencing in the area of the crossover gate, approximately 75 yards short of the start/finish line at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

“We’re very confident that we’ll be ready for (Sunday’s) event, with the 55th running of the Daytona 500,” O’Donnell said. “But, as with any of these incidents, we’ll conduct a thorough review. We’ll work closely with the tracks as with all our events, learn what we can and see what we can apply in the future.”

The emergency in the grandstand tempered Stewart’s fifth victory in his last six February races at Daytona and the 11th Nationwide Series win of his career.

“Fortunately, with the way the event’s equipped up, there were plenty of emergency workers ready to go, and they jumped in on it pretty quickly,” NASCAR president Mike Helton told ESPN. “And right now, it’s just a function of trying to determine what all damage is done.

“They’re moving folks, as we’ve seen, to care centers and taking some folks over to Halifax Medical (Center), so we’ll be able to update later on, but right now, all we know is everybody’s working real hard on determining what all happened.”

Larson climbed from his car almost immediately and was evaluated and released from the infield care center.

Drivers, Larson included, were more concerned with the safety of the fans than the outcome of the race.

“The important thing is what’s going on on the frontstretch right now,” Stewart said after climbing from his car. “We’ve always known since racing was started this is a dangerous sport. But it’s hard. We assume that risk. It’s hard when the fans get caught up in it.

“As much as we want to celebrate right now, as much as this is a big deal to us, I’m more worried about the drivers and fans in the stands right now. I could see it all in the mirror and it didn’t look good from where I was either.”

Smith said he wasn’t about to surrender the victory to Keselowski 200 yards from the finish line, but his first thoughts were with the injured spectators.

“Everybody the only thing I’m concerned about right now is the people in the stands,” Smith posted to his Twitter account after the race. “Praying for all who were affected by the accident.”

Keselowski echoed the concern and said he understood Smith’s attempt to block his move.

“We made a move to try and win the race,” Keselowski said. “We were in the catbird seat. Regan was in a good spot. He was first and I was second, and we were pushing. I kind of had the run and the move to win the race, and Regan obviously tried to block it, and that’s understandable.

Sam Hornish Jr. crossed the stripe in second place, followed by rookie Alex Bowman, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Parker Kligerman.

The last-lap wreck wasn’t the only serious incident of the event. A 13-car wreck in Turns 1 and 2, triggered by contact between the No. 43 Ford Mustang of Michael Annett and the No. 3 Chevrolet Camaro of Austin Dillon — both championship hopefuls — stopped the race after 116 laps and set up the finish.

Annett was transported to Halifax Health Medical Center. Richard Petty Motorsports later reported that Annett, whose car slammed the outside wall nose-first, was treated for bruising on his chest and received a CT scan. He remains in the hospital for further observation.

In a green-white-checkered-flag finish, Scott passed NASCAR wunderkind Kyle Larson to win Friday night’s Lucas Oil 150 Camping World Truck Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.

The victory was Scott’s first of the season and second of his career, his first win coming at Dover in 2009. But Scott provided only half the drama.

James Buescher and Ty Dillon, the top two contenders for the series championship, both had major trouble, with Buescher blowing a right front tire and crashing hard into the Turn 4 wall with less than three laps left.

Buescher finished 17th and Dillon 15th, to tighten the race for the title as the series heads for the season finale next Friday at Homestead. Buescher leads Timothy Peters by 11 points and Dillon by 12.

Passed by Dillon early in the race, Scott learned from the experience.

“I probably have to give a dozen roses to Ty Dillon,” said Scott, “because he was able to get by me on a restart earlier by holding me down and driving in deep through the corner and just keeping position on me — and I learned from it.

“Luckily I was able to come back and have the opportunity to do the same thing to somebody else, somebody that probably wasn’t expecting it… Fortunately for us, I was able to apply something I learned earlier in the race. I just went into the corner really hard, held him down and got him a little loose.”

Larson trailed Scott to the finish line, followed by Joey Coulter and Peters. Ryan Blaney completed the top five.

Friday’s race went green for the first 36 laps before it took on the character of a demolition derby. Six cautions, which occupied 33 of the next 42 laps, saw a rash of competitive trucks damaged on the treacherous race track.

Jason White collected Todd Bodine’s Toyota on Lap 49. Parker Kligerman’s Toyota broke loose in traffic on Lap 54 and waylaid the truck of Matt Crafton. Polesitter Nelson Piquet Jr., Johnny Sauter, Ron Hornaday Jr. and Miguel Paludo were involved in a four-truck melee on Lap 65.

Cale Gale crashed on the frontstretch on Lap 73 to bring out caution No. 6. Divergent pit strategies put Ryan Truex in the lead before Justin Lofton overtook him as the race neared the 100-lap mark, but a caution on Lap 102 shuffled the running order for a restart on Lap 109, with Peters and Scott leading the field to green.

Larson dived to the inside to pass the top two trucks on the restart lap, but one circuit later, German Quiroga drove too hard into Turn 1, locked his brakes and wrecked the trucks of Brendan Gaughan and Dillon.

NASCAR stopped the race for 13 minutes, 10 seconds to facilitate track cleanup. Back under yellow, Dillon’s crew worked frantically to patch the damage to the No. 3 Chevrolet, keeping Dillon on the lead lap.

Larson held the top spot until Scott passed him on Lap 152 of 153.

Note: Eric Phillips, who called the shots for the No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota driven by Scott, won for the 27th time as a Truck Series crew chief, second most all-time. He’s one behind KBM general manager Rick Ren in NCWTS crew chief victories.