Enfinger grasps final Round of 8 spot in Truck Playoffs; Rhodes' title campaign ends at Kansas

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Friday evening’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway was straightforward for its 134-lap duration.

Just one caution for cause bunched the field back up but all that was yet to be determined in the final stage was who would be the final driver to race their way into the Round of 8 of the 2024 postseason.

CR7 Motorsports’ Grant Enfinger outdueled two-time series champion Ben Rhodes for the final spot by 25 points after the No. 99 ThorSport Racing driver ran out of fuel with two laps to go after trying to stretch his tank for the full 52-lap run to the end.

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“Kind of knew, just racing with Ben and knowing the situation they’re in, they were going to throw that “Hail Mary,” Enfinger said. “We had contemplated trying to cover that just to make sure he couldn’t jump us 12 spots just to stay on the same strategy as him but we were still a couple laps out of our window so Jeff (Stankiewicz, crew chief) opted not to do that and he made the right call for sure.

“But Ben definitely kept us honest and he definitely took a couple years off mine and Jeff’s life.”

Struggling with handling issues for the duration of the race, Rhodes failed to score points in either of the first two stages. Attempting to go without a stop for the final green-flag run kept the bubble battle close with Enfinger but the ill-fated No. 99 neither had the pace nor fuel to pull off the last-ditch effort.

“I’ve got a couple [hypotheses],” Rhodes told NASCAR.com in regards to how his truck raced. “Maybe.. possibly, bar load, but I’m gonna have to go back and talk with guys and investigate, figure out what went wrong. It’s pretty crazy how we were able to qualify fourth, the truck drove so well, and then fire off the race where you’re absolute junk. We made really, really, really, really big adjustments on it and nothing really made a difference except one, which leads me to believe somehow bar load, something happened there.”

Despite not having the night or opening round Enfinger wanted out of his No. 9 Chevrolet Silverado, the team will get to enter the Round of 8 for a second consecutive season as the 39-year-old veteran continues to chase his first championship after last year’s heartbreak at Phoenix.

However, he’ll have work to do heading to his home track of Talladega Superspeedway as he enters the semi-final round 11 points below the Championship 4 cutoff.

“This is definitely not a three-race stint that we’re proud of by any means at CR7 Motorsports,” Enfinger said. “Feel like we turned a corner earlier in the year and then we stumbled here this Round of 10. So looking forward to getting back on track next week at Talladega, and anything can happen there obviously but it’s my home track. I love racing there. We’ll get through there and go on.”

This season will mark the first time since 2020 Rhodes failed to make the playoffs and while the 27-year-old will be etched in series history as a multi-time titleholder, getting eliminated never gets easy.

“Oh yeah, they all hurt if you don’t have the trophy, especially after you win a couple now, it makes everything hurt a lot worse,” Rhodes lamented. “You just demand more performance out of yourself and your team. For us to be so far off in the race is quite crazy, especially with the changes we threw at it. So we just got to go back and research, figure out what happened, and I’m going to use the rest of season to develop now and try to make sure that next year we can get ourselves solid performances.”