NASCAR Truck Series at Las Vegas 2015: Full Schedule, Standings and Preview

Erik Jones leads a highly competitive championship chase with six races remaining in the 2015 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season. Matt Crafton, Tyler Reddick and Johnny Sauter are all within 50 points of the top spot.

Up next is a visit to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Rhino Linings 350 on Saturday. It's a race Jones won last year, and he'd love a repeat performance to give himself a little more breathing room atop the standings heading into the business end of the campaign.

Let's check out all of the important viewing information for this week's event. That's followed by a look at the updated standings and a preview of Saturday's race.

Rhino Linings 350 Schedule

Date	Time (ET)	Event	TV
Saturday, Oct. 3	12 - 2:30 p.m.	Final Practice	Fox Sports 2
Saturday, Oct. 3	7:05 p.m.	Qualifying	Fox Sports 2
Saturday, Oct. 3	10 p.m.	Race	Fox Sports 1

Truck Series Standings

Rank	Driver	Points	Wins
1	Erik Jones	666	2
2	Matt Crafton	-7	4
3	Tyler Reddick	-19	2
4	Johnny Sauter	-49	0
5	Daniel Hemric	-108	0
6	Timothy Peters	-114	0
7	Cameron Hayley	-117	0
8	John Wes Townley	-148	0
9	Spencer Gallagher	-162	0
10	Ben Kennedy	-162	0

Race Preview

While most of the focus has been on the aforementioned quartet of top contenders, other drivers have stolen the spotlight in recent weeks. John Hunter Nemechek earned his first career win at Chicagoland, and Sprint Cup Series star Austin Dillon dominated at New Hampshire.

That's put even more pressure on Jones and his main counterparts to elevate their performance at Las Vegas with the title hanging in the balance.

It's a track where strategy plays a significant role in the outcome, especially in terms of managing fuel. Jones stated it's tough to determine whether being atop the standings will impact the team's decision-making Saturday, per Paddock Talk:

"

Yes and no. I think we've raced mostly the same all year -- being conservatively aggressive I guess you could say. I don't feel like we have really put ourselves in any bad situations -- maybe some that didn't work out really how we had hoped, but we've been pretty conservative with most of our calls the whole year and really haven't done a lot of things that we have done in the past to try to get ourselves in certain positions.

"

Crafton is just trying to keep things simple at a time when even a minor mistake can be the difference in finishing first or second, as noted by Kristen Schneider of Popular Speed.

"We're going to each and every race and try to lead laps and win the race," Crafton said. "If we do that, we get max points."

Along with the battle for the championship, this week's race is also going to generate some extra headlines because it marks the return of Travis Pastrana to NASCAR.

Bob Pockrass of ESPN.com reported the X Games superstar reached a one-race deal with NTS Motorsports to drive the No. 31 truck at Las Vegas. He spent two seasons in the Xfinity Series, running 42 races and earning four top-10 finishes. This will mark his second career truck series start.

Getting some extra attention for the truck series is always a positive. There have been some highly entertaining races in recent weeks, especially at Chicagoland, where fuel problems turned the race into a matter of survival, which Nemechek took advantage of to find Victory Lane for the first time.

Las Vegas is another track where trying to push the limits of the fuel window will probably come into play. Add in the limited amount of time left in the season, and teams will be forced to make some extremely difficult calls late in the race.

All told, there should be no shortage of drama Saturday night.