Hornaday Wins St. Louis Truck Race

September 6, 2008 8:45 p.m. EST

Madison, IL (AHN) - Ron Hornaday is intent on defending his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship and Saturday he served notice he's not going down lightly.

Hornaday led 113 of 160 laps and led early and late before coming away with a victory in the Camping World 200 at Gateway International Raceway.

Points leader Johnny Benson finished third as his points lead shrunk to 94 points with eight races left in the season.

"(Crew chief) Trip Bruce and the guys did a great job. This thing was as good as anybody through the corners,'' said Benson. "We're pretty happy with what we have to work with, and we'll just deal with it."

It was the first race in the Truck Series since NASCAR amended a rules change this week that affects new power plants - primarily Toyotas.

"They kicked our (butts) down the straightaway. There isn't any doubt about it. Before, we were always equal to them, and now, we're nowhere near equal to them,'' said Benson.

"We have to deal with it. Not sure why we fall within different rules as everybody else, but we'll do the best we can. That's all we can do," he added.

Pole-sitter Dennis Setzer settled for runner-up honors and was followed by Benson, Todd Bodine and Jack Sprague.

The race was slowed by seven cautions as Hornaday won his fourth race of the year.

Erik Darnell, Mike Skinner, Rick Crawford, Colin Braun and Ted Musgrave closed out the top-10 finishers.

"We had a really good truck. I think we knew that after practice yesterday. We didn't qualify where we wanted to but we knew we had a really good truck in race trim. The guys did a great job today. They were awesome on pit road. Our stops were phenomenal today. They got out ahead of guys every time. Track position was just very important today,'' said Darnell.

"I think we saw that at the end with the 18 and 23. I don't necessarily know those guys were as good as some of the trucks out there, but track was position was huge and they got it and it was the right call for them. We were just a little bit too tight at the end and we couldn't do anything with those guys in front of us and had to settle for a sixth place finish," he added.