NASCAR Truck Series: Despite 0 wins since 2017, Matt Crafton is the 2019 champion

Matt Crafton may not have a NASCAR Truck Series victory in the last 58 races going back to the mid-2017 season. But he is still this year’s champion.

In a NASCAR playoff format that was revamped only a few years ago to play a bigger emphasis on winning, it is rare to see a driver qualify for the Championship 4 without having won a race up until the season finale.

But that is exactly what ThorSport Racing’s Matt Crafton did thanks to an ultra-consistent 2019 season.

In the 16-race regular season, Crafton recorded six top five finishes and eight additional top 10 finishes, and his only two non-top 10 finishes were respectable runs of 13th and 14th place. His average finish in the regular season was a series-best 7.25.

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But that regular season did not result in a victory, and it only extended his win drought to more than two years. He entered the season having not won a race since he won at Eldora Speedway in July of 2017, and that did not change.

It also didn’t change in the round of 8 of the three-round, seven-race playoffs, where GMS Racing’s Brett Moffitt and Hattori Racing Enterprises’ Austin Hill won their way into the round of 6.

Crafton was able to qualify for the round of 6 based on his point total despite an engine issue hampering him in the round of 8 finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The same issue affected his two playoff teammates, Grant Enfinger and Johnny Sauter, and it ended up eliminating them from the playoffs following the round of 8.

The following round, Halmar Friesen Racing’s Stewart Friesen was the only driver who won his way to the Championship 4, doing so at ISM Raceway. Crafton, once again, had to advance based on his point total, and he did so only barely as the laps wound down in the round of 6 finale at ISM Raceway, as he edged out Hill for the fourth and final transfer spot.

Now all Crafton need to do to win the championship was finish ahead of Friesen, GMS Racing’s Brett Moffitt and Niece Motorsports’ Ross Chastain in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The 43-year-old Tulare, California was considered the underdog, and justifiably so. Friesen had just won the most recent race, Moffitt’s win drought was only at four races and Chastain’s was only at eight. Crafton’s, meanwhile, was at 57. Friesen won two races this year while Moffitt won four and Chastain won three.

Fortunately for Crafton, only once in three previous Championship 4s had the season finale race winner been crowned champion. But even still, he had only finished ahead of Friesen, Moffitt and Chastain in one of the season’s first 22 races.

It would still be an uphill battle.

But once again, fortunately for Crafton, he doubled that total in the 134-lap season finale around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Homestead-Miami Speedway oval in Homestead, Florida with his second place finish behind Hill.

Chastain finished in fourth place, Moffitt finished in fifth and Friesen finished in 11th, and none of them were even close to Crafton on the track; he had Chastain cleared by more than nine seconds, slightly under one-third of the track, when he took the checkered flag.

So for the first time in Truck Series history, the first time in the Championship 4 era in any NASCAR national series and the first time in any NASCAR national series since Austin Dillon won the 2013 Xfinity Series championship, the champion did not win a single race throughout the season.

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In a NASCAR playoff format dominated by wins, Matt Crafton staked his claim as the top Truck Series driver via nothing more than consistency. Really, that has been the theme of his career. He has competed in the Truck Series on a full-time basis for 19 seasons. In 453 starts, he has earned just 14 victories, and he has only been victorious at any point in seven seasons.

Yet he is now a three-time series champion, trailing only Ron Hornaday Jr., a 51-time race winner, on the all-time titles list. What he did this year was pretty impressive to say the very least; only now is he being recognized for it as the newly crowned champion.

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