Ben Rhodes wins 2022 NASCAR Truck Series championship

Ben Rhodes began the 2021 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season by winning the first two races. On Friday night, he ended the season with his first series championship. Despite not winning the Lucas Oil 150 at Phoenix Raceway, Rhodes finished ahead of Championship Round rivals Zane Smith, John Hunter Nemechek, and Matt Crafton to secure the title in his sixth full year of Truck competition.

A pair of eliminated drivers led the way in qualifying as Chandler Smith won the pole ahead of Sheldon Creed. Rhodes topped the Championship Four with a fourth-place qualifying effort ahead of Crafton’s fifth. Zane Smith and Nemechek started thirteetnh and sixteenth, respectively. Dawson Cram, Jennifer Jo Cobb, and Norm Benning missed the show.

Creed, reeling after missing the final round by just four points, quickly jumped to the lead. Ten laps in, Nemechek’s title hopes were quickly jeopardised when contact with Kris Wright caused him to brush the wall and his left-front tyre to go down. As a result, he fell two laps down and out of the top thirty. Lawless Alan‘s spin a lap later led to a caution.

Smith passed Creed for the top spot on lap 35 and led to the stage win. Todd Gilliland, Stewart Friesen, Rhodes, Carson Hocevar, Crafton, Christian Eckes, Zane Smith, and Derek Kraus rounded out the top ten; Nemechek was thirtieth. Taylor Gray spun with a downed right-rear coming to the finish.

Beating the field off pit road between segments, Creed assumed the lead to begin Stage #2. Nemechek elected to pit, subverting expectations that he would stay out and take the wave-around to return to the lead lap. The stage commenced with Creed taking off ahead of Rhodes. Although Nemechek began the stage as the first lapped truck and would rejoin the lead lap if a caution came out via free pass, Creed and the leaders eventually passed Spencer Boyd, shuffling the pass to him instead.

Much like in the first stage, Creed dominated the second before Chandler Smith took the lead on the final lap. Rhodes once again led the final four in third, followed by Friesen, Gilliland, Zane Smith, Hocevar, Crafton, Enfinger, and Eckes. Nemechek remained a lap down in twenty-seventh and the fourth driver a lap down behind Will Rodgers, Jordan Anderson, and Austin Wayne Self. While the three took the wave-around, Nemechek once again decided against it and assumed the free pass position.

Friesen and Smith paced the grid to the start of Stage #3. A strong restart by Creed propelled him to the lead two corners later before the caution came out for Tate Fogleman‘s truck stopping on the track, finally placing Nemechek back on the lead lap. Creed continued to lead on the lap 106 restart. Four laps later, Zane Smith overtook Rhodes for third to become the highest-running playoff driver.

By the 20-to-go mark, Nemechek had caught Crafton for eleventh while Chandler Smith took second from Friesen. Smith cleared Creed for first on lap 133, and Friesen did the same to take second shortly after. With ten laps remaining, Rhodes chased down Zane Smith for fourth, an effort that was aided by lapped traffic and a tap from the rear, before completing the pass two laps later.

Rhodes padded his championship lead by claiming third from Creed. As Chandler Smith drove off to his second career win, Rhodes placed third ahead of Zane Smith (fifth), Nemechek (seventh), and Crafton (twelfth). It is ThorSport Racing‘s fourth driver’s championship after Crafton won in 2013, 2014, and 2019, while Rhodes enjoys his first title since winning the now-ARCA Menards Series East in 2014.