Erik Jones dominates Truck Series race at Texas

Erik Jones dominated the Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night, taking his No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota to Victory Lane at the 1.5-mile track.

In doing so, the 19-year-old Jones moved one step closer to possibly securing the series championship in his first full-time season.

"We went through a lot of ups and downs, really, over the last couple of months," Jones said. "So to get our Toyota Tundra back in the championship hunt, it's pretty awesome."

Jones' KBM teammate, Daniel Suarez, finished second with Ryan Blaney, two-time defending series champion Matt Crafton and Tyler Reddick rounding out the top five.

“It definitely was a strong run for Kyle Busch Motorsports," said Suarez, a series rookie still seeking his first career win. "Everyone did an amazing job. My truck was fast -- definitely the fastest out there in the last run, but we were just waiting for a caution to take place. I really felt like we had a shot.

"We were a little bit off in the first half of the race and then under the caution we were able to close the gap 100 percent. Then we didn’t have the best pit stop and instead of gaining a little bit of ground, we lost a little bit of ground, but that’s part of racing. We have to keep learning and keep working and I really feel like if we keep doing what we’re doing and keep ourselves on the right track that we are going to get a win.”

Friday night belonged to Jones, however, as he led a race-high 117 of the 148 laps.

It was the third CWTS win of the season for Jones, who also padded his series points lead over Crafton with his dominating run. Jones owns a 17-point lead over Crafton with only two races remaining -- next week at Phoenix and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speeday on Nov. 20.

Jones held a commanding lead of 3.572 seconds over Suarez with 20 laps remaining Friday, but Suarez cut that lead down to 1.875 seconds by 11 to go as Jones had to deal with lapped traffic.

That was as close as Suarez could get to Jones in the closing laps. When Jones took the white flag signifying one to go, his lead was back up to 2.7 seconds and he cruised to the win from there.

Jones also will race Saturday in the XFINITY Series race, and sub for the suspended Matt Kenseth on Sunday in the Sprint Cup event.

"It's going to be quite a weekend, and this is quite a way to start it off," Jones said.

Jones won the XFINITY race at Texas in April, but had never finished higher than 11th in a Truck Series race at the track until scoring Friday's victory.

"It's nice to be back in Victory Lane in Texas -- a place I love," Jones said. "It's so cool to win here. The (Toyota) Tundras are built in San Antonio (Texas), so that's really cool."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.