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USA Today via Reuters

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USA Today via Reuters

Back in the 2014 NASCAR Truck Series, there was a bizarre incident late in the race. While Erik Jones was leading, the lights at the Phoenix Raceway inexplicably blinked off.

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Fortunately, the visibility was not that bad, and there were no wrecks. However, NASCAR was not taking any chances and halted the race.

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This wasn’t an isolated incident, because the track had had multiple failures earlier in the weekend. In fact, the race start faced an hour’s delay due to a power failure.

READ MORE: NASCAR Tire Changer Comes Clean on the Pit Stop That Set Erik Jones’ Car on Fire

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Eventually, the race resumed as normal, but there was always that lingering worry that the power may fail again. Finally, with 24 laps to go, the inevitable happened and NASCAR declared the results.

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How did Erik Jones perform in the truck race?

The then 18-year-old driver was competing in his 12th and final start of the season. Suffice to say, the #51 driver was determined to go out on a high note.

It was a great day in the office for the driver because he started on the pole and led 114 out of 126 laps. Along the way, Jones stormed to his third victory of the season.

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Admittedly, a few drivers were disappointed that the light went out as they were banking on the final restart being very very exciting. However, Jones insisted that he had the ability to fend off any attack and retain his race lead. Eventually, champion Matt Crafton had a different take and believed that he could have won instead.

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This win was Jones’ second consecutive Phoenix win, having achieved it last year in his fifth career Truck start. His other race wins came at Iowa and Las Vegas.

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Since then, he only managed to rack up three more Truck Series wins in his career. All of those came in the 2015 season, at Iowa, Motorsport Park, and at the Texas Motor Speedway.

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Dhruv George

14,839 Articles

Dhruv George is EssentiallySports’ foremost authority on motorsport and a founding member of the outlet’s NASCAR desk. A Journalism graduate fluent in English and French, he brings over eight years of motorsports journalism experience covering everything from high-octane NASCAR battles to the finesse of Formula 1 and MotoGP. His extensive paddock access has earned him exclusive interviews with top names such as Know more

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Ranvijay Singh

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