Alex Tagliani Canadian Tire Motorsport Park Race Recap

Alex Tagliani (@Tagliani) won the pole, led laps and scored a fifth place finish in Chevrolet Silverado 250 Sunday afternoon at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada).
 
But forgive the driver of the Cooper Standard Ford F-150 if he felt a twinge of disappointment after the race.
 
Alex showed speed all weekend, beginning with the first practice on Saturday morning where he led the session by a whopping.693 seconds.  He backed up that strong run during qualifying later that afternoon, winning the pole position with a record lap of 80.084 seconds, 110.539 mph – bettering the mark he set in 2014. 
 
Tagliani led the first six laps of the race until he made a scheduled fuel only pit stop on lap 7.  He returned to the track ninth in the running order but climbed up to third when the first caution slowed the race on lap 15.  He restarted second when the race went green on lap 16.  He briefly fell back to fourth but steadily worked his way to the front of the pack, re-taking the lead on lap 27. 
 
He was running second when he made his scheduled green flag stop for four tires and fuel on lap 35.  Once the cycle of pit stops was complete by lap 40, Tagliani was fifth.
 
From there Tagliani stayed in the top five for the remainder of the 64 lap race.  On lap 48 he was up to third and on lap 54 he picked off second place.  He was in hot pursuit of leader Erik Jones when the fifth and final caution slowed the race on lap 61, setting up a green-white-checkered dash to the finish. 
 
Jones led the field to Turn 1 but couldn’t shake Tagliani, who stayed glued to his competitor’s tailgate. Alex was running second on the final lap of the race and was in position to challenge for the win when he lost third gear, ending his chances for a possible victory.  The world-class road racer quickly recovered and was able to finish fifth, his best effort in two NASCAR Camping World Truck Series starts.

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