Mike Bliss wins title; teammate wins race

Ron Hornaday won the Ford 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) -- Mike Bliss capped his return to NASCAR's truck series by winning the championship Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Ron Hornaday, a former truck series champion, won the Ford 200 in a Chevrolet entered just this once as a teammate to Bliss.
Polesitter Bliss finished fifth to win his first title.
Bliss celebrated by pulling his truck alongside that of Hornaday on the frontstretch and they high-fived through their windows. Bliss did the traditional burnouts, creating a thick burst of white smoke.
Good team
"This is unbelievable, Ron wins the race and we win the championship," Bliss said. "That tells you how good this team is.
"When we started the year off, we had a bad race and we were way back in points, but we kept coming back. The team was good and I thought halfway through the year we could win the championship."
Bliss ran the first six years of the series' existence, then made a run at the Winston Cup series for two seasons before going back to the trucks. He had a strong year, winning five races and beating Rick Crawford for the championship by 46 points.
Crawford came into the finale trailing Bliss by 32 points, but fell a lap down after the race's only caution came out while he was on pit road having his truck serviced. He finished seventh.
Ted Musgrave finished second in the race in a Dodge, and wound up third in the standings, 51 points back.
The three title contenders raced near the front of the pack almost the entire race, but Crawford fell out when the caution came out on lap 113. Hornaday led on the restart on the 117th of 134 laps and remained out front until the finish.
"I just needed to get out front," Hornaday said. "We were lucky not to go a lap down and I hated to see that yellow because we really would have stretched out the lead.
Special truck
"I had never driven anything that came to life on the long run like this truck did."
Jason Leffler finished third in a Dodge, ending Ultra Motorsports' streak of winning a race in each year of the series' existence. Ultra owner Jim Smith was a series founder in 1995.