Kyle Krisiloff made his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut on Friday night for the running of the GM FlexFuel 250 at Daytona International Speedway.  Unfortunately, a top-10 run ended early after two separate incidents spoiled his chances for a good finish.  Krisiloff and the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations/Krud Kutter Chevrolet finished in the 28th position after having to retire the Billy Ballew Motorsports-entry two laps shy of the finish.

“Our goal was to finish,” said Krisiloff, the youngest of the series’ competitors at the age of 19.  “We almost made it; just a matter of circumstances put us in an undesirable situation.  We were running in the top-10 for the majority of the race then got caught up in an incident.  We slowed down, but someone behind us didn’t and we got spun out.  After that, it was a rookie mistake on my part that put us a lap down.  The accident caused something to happen to the truck though.  You don’t go from perfect to falling that far back.  On the final restart, the truck in front of me had transmission troubles and didn’t take off.  The No. 33 (Ron Hornaday) couldn’t get stopped in time and ran into us.  We’ll bounce back.  We travel to California next week, a track I favor, so I look forward to getting the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations/Krud Kutter Chevrolet back up front for a top-10 finish.”

The weekend started off well for the Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate.  During practice, Krisiloff and the Billy Ballew Motorsports team were getting the No. 15 adjusted to qualifying mode.  They then practiced a fuel run, making the most laps of anyone during the first session.  The team came to pre-season testing and were going back and forth with changes they had learned from coming down a month earlier.  A bit of a scare came over the team during the final practice when the No. 15 just shut off when in a pack of trucks drafting.  The diagnosis was simply a shortage of fuel.  With the problem resolved, the team prepared the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations/Krud Kutter Chevrolet for qualifying.

Krisiloff qualified in the 23rd position to start the 100-lap race.  The team was a bit disappointed in qualifying, running almost a half a second slower than their practice times, but knew they had a strong enough truck in the draft, that starting in the rear was not going to be a problem.  In fact, from the drop of the green flag, Krisiloff took the Chevrolet to the front and by lap 10, was already in the 11th position, dicing it up with the veterans of the series.

The first caution waved on lap 27 and Krisiloff made his way down pit road.  The No. 66 Best Buy NASCAR Nextel Cup Series team crewed the machine and quickly made work of changing four tires and adding fuel.  They didn’t lose a single position, even though they had to back the machine up to exit the pit, and Krisiloff returned to 10th place.

The second caution came out on lap 43 for a multi-truck incident which the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations/Krud Kutter Chevrolet narrowly avoided.  Krisiloff locked the brakes up to miss a truck and was forced to pit to replace his four flat-spotted tires.  Crew Chief Richie Wauters radioed into his driver, “Good job of missing it.”  Krisiloff replied, “It was luck.”  Wauters responded, “Luck’s good to have.”

Krisiloff restarted in 12th position and was in the main pack of drafting machines.  Just past the halfway mark, Krisiloff radioed that he was extremely loose and something was wrong.  The caution waved on lap 73 for another multi-truck incident which Krisiloff wasn’t able to avoid this time.  He was knocked from behind and spun around, causing from left front fender damage.  The crew went to work to get the nose down, change four tires, make a trackbar adjustment and add fuel.  Unfortunately, Krisiloff broke a NASCAR rule entering the pit area and was penalized a lap for driving through too many pit stalls.

Krisiloff restarted the event at the tail end of the longest line, another penalty assessed, but it didn’t’ seem to matter, as the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations/Krud Kutter Chevrolet fell off the pace.  The truck must have received more damage than initially diagnosed, as the No. 15 fell behind and lost another lap to the leaders on lap 94, just six laps shy of the finish.  The caution waved again on lap 95 and all the trucks lined up single-file.  Coming to the green flag for the restart, the No. 21, who was having transmission troubles, didn’t take off and Krisiloff was able to back it down.  The No. 33 behind him wasn’t though and ran over the No. 15, sending Krisiloff head on into the wall, causing significant damage to the front end of the Chevy Silverado.  Damage was too severe to continue, even for two more laps.  Krisiloff parked the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations/Krud Kutter Chevrolet, placing him 28th in the final running order.

Next up for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is this Friday night at California Speedway.  The Racetickets.com 200 gets underway at 6:15 p.m. local time.