{"id":10360,"date":"2022-06-05T11:11:42","date_gmt":"2022-06-05T15:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=10360"},"modified":"2022-06-21T16:23:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T20:23:44","slug":"christian-eckes-gateway-runner-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/06\/05\/christian-eckes-gateway-runner-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Eckes frustrated, after Gateway runner-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MADISON, Ill. &#8212;<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Christian Eckes<\/strong> reached into his truck and took a swig of his drink on pit road at Gateway. He leaned against it, eyes sulken and downtrodden.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Two of the last three races, we have been leading and the caution comes out late,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Given Eckes had the race won until a late caution, I understand his frustration.<\/p>\n<h2>Christian Eckes frustrated, after runner-up at Gateway<\/h2>\n<p><a id=\"-f6A9Y08QJZnf0-cy9Bwgw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1401035847\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/a%20id=&#039;-f6A9Y08QJZnf0-cy9Bwgw&#039;%20class=&#039;gie-single&#039;%20href=&#039;http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1401035847&#039;%20target=&#039;_blank&#039;%20style=&#039;color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal%20!important;border:none;display:inline-block;&#039;Embed%20from%20Getty%20Images\/ascriptwindow.gie=window.gie||function(c)(gie.q=gie.q||%5B%5D).push(c);gie(function()gie.widgets.load(id:&#039;-f6A9Y08QJZnf0-cy9Bwgw&#039;,sig:&#039;CZ9eelxVLpQ1hsIJvgC3UQtElV63KFlpX0DIKg6oO9Q=&#039;,w:&#039;594px&#039;,h:&#039;395px&#039;,items:&#039;1401035847&#039;,caption:%20true%20,tld:&#039;com&#039;,is360:%20false%20));\/scriptscript%20src=&#039;\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js&#039;%20charset=&#039;utf-8&#039;%20async\/script\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'-f6A9Y08QJZnf0-cy9Bwgw',sig:'CZ9eelxVLpQ1hsIJvgC3UQtElV63KFlpX0DIKg6oO9Q=',w:'594px',h:'395px',items:'1401035847',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With five laps to go in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Toyota 200 at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/06\/04\/nascar-drivers-all-star-race-thoughts\/\" target=\"_self\">World Wide Technology Raceway<\/a>, Eckes overtook <strong>Derek Kraus<\/strong> for the race lead into Turn 1. He pulled away and had the race in check, until\u00a0<strong>Tanner Gray<\/strong> hit the wall in Turn 3 with three laps to go and forced overtime.<\/p>\n<p>The outside line was the strong line on restarts. So to Eckes, picking it was &#8220;a no brainer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t for him, however.<\/p>\n<p>On the overtime restart, he spun his tires and lost the lead to\u00a0<strong>Corey Heim<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just didn\u2019t get a good launch,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>By the time he passed <strong>Chandler Smith<\/strong> for second, Heim pulled away from the field. Whatever chance he had to reel in Heim evaporated when\u00a0<strong>Carson Hocevar<\/strong> spun out in Turn 1 and got t-boned on the final lap.<\/p>\n<p>This sealed <a href=\"https:\/\/racing.ap.org\/article\/heim-wins-wild-truck-series-finish-gateway-near-st-louis\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Heim&#8217;s secocnd career victory<\/a>, and left Eckes wondering what he could&#8217;ve done different.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s just really frustrating,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The past three weeks, we should have won, and we didn\u2019t. I\u2019m going to go back to the drawing board and figure some stuff out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Christian Eckes frustrated, after runner-up at Gateway<\/h2>\n<p>All in all, Eckes&#8217; runner-up finish, combined with an eighth-place finish in Stage 1, moved him up to sixth in points. Seventy ahead of\u00a0<strong>Grant Enfinger<\/strong> in the cutoff for the final playoff spot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It just sucks, but very proud of my ThorSport Racing team,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TOP IMAGE: Tucker White\/LastWordonSports.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MADISON, Ill. &#8212;\u00a0Christian Eckes reached into his truck and took a swig of his drink on pit road at Gateway. He leaned against it, eyes sulken and downtrodden. &#8220;Two of the last three races, we have been leading and the caution comes out late,&#8221; he said. Given Eckes had the race won until a late [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":10362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1666],"tags":[1189,1033,14,1550,371,1655,1650],"class_list":["post-10360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-camping-world-truck-series","tag-christian-eckes","tag-gateway-motorsports-park","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2022","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-toyota-200","tag-world-wide-technology-raceway"],"modified_by":"Tucker White","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}