Christian Eckes wins the Truck Series race at Bristol, Kyle Busch comes home second

Kyle Busch missed his second NASCAR Truck Series win of the season by a fraction after losing the final stage to McAnally-Hilgemann Racing driver Christian Eckes.

The fourth Truck Series race on the NASCAR calendar got done and dusted at the Bristol Motor Speedway. The 250-lap run saw Busch sweeping both stages but failed to etch the final stage under his name. After leading 144 laps at the Weather Guard Truck Race, Eckes clinched the P1 spot as he narrowly sidelined the #7 Chevrolet Truck to pave the way for his victory burnouts.

The final stage restart on lap 142 saw Busch taking the lead from Eckes, but the latter swooped past the 38-year-old later in the race, defeating him by a slim margin of 0.141 seconds.

Post missing out on his potential P1 at Bristol, the Spire Motorsports driver reflected on how his victory got robbed because of using the same set of compounds throughout the day.

Busch's post-race thoughts at Bristol were shared by motorsports journalist Noah Lewis on his X (formerly Twitter) account.

"The whole day was just marred by date codes, we're mandated to run in older date codes in practice. We way overadjusted the Truck to make it comfortable to make it fast when we needed it then and then it was just way too tight in the end."

"We were way tighter than I would have ever had my balance, given that working on the same tires all day long", Kyle Busch added.

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Kyle Busch's rival shares his thoughts after robbing him of the highly probable victory at Bristol

Christian Eckes became polesitter at the Weather Guard Truck Series race while Kyle Busch launched his run from the P4 spot.

By crossing the checkered flag, being just a fraction of a second ahead of the Nevada native, the 23-year-old marked the sixth Truck Series victory of his career and the first one at a short track less than one mile in length.

With just 32 laps until the checkered flag dropped, Nick Sanchez nudged his rival Stewart Friesen, spinning him out. Though the #52 driver regained his momentum despite getting spun, the incident resulted in a P22 finish.

Nevertheless, the incident did not affect Eckes' dominant run as he went on to secure the win. Post his exhilarating run against Busch on the asphalt, the New York native reflected on his weekend as he shared his thoughts with Fox reporter Josh Sims.

He said (via X):

"Ah, man! It's so sweet. There's so much behind this win, from last year, missing out on Championship 4 and losing the race with five to go. To come back and redeem ourselves was the number one goal."