straight wins in the Rolex Series. Who will be in the truck next week is unknown right now.
Marc Davis, who is a JGR development driver, will be driving the #81 truck for Randy Moss’ team. He’ll also be driving for Venturini Motorsports at Talladega in the ARCA Series. While he’s not getting the hype or recognition Logano is, he’ll be a driver to keep an eye on for the future.
Xpress Motorsports will be switching from Chevy to the Japanese brand when the trucks go to Las Vegas. They’ve also signed a deal with Bill Davis Racing. Interesting considering the talk of Davis selling his car and truck operations.
Chrissy Wallace was back in the #03 truck for Germain Racing. Keven Wood, the latest member of the famed Wood Brothers family to race, was in the #21 truck. Jeff Green was in the #40 truck. TJ Bell was in the #7 truck and may be moving to a permanent ride next season.
One of the other things being discussed during the pre-race show was the fact that the Japanese brand trucks had to run a larger restrictor plate than everyone else. Some drivers complained that they were getting screwed over because of all the hard work their teams had done. This wouldn’t even be a factor had TRD followed the rules at the beginning of the season and NA$CAR bothered to enforce them. The complaints would be proven unjustified since Mike Skinner and Johnny Benson would lead and Skinner, Bodine, Benson, and Musgrave would be in the Top 10. It sounds more like parity was finally re-established. Another thing that was mentioned was if Chevy does run their R-07 engine in the Truck Series, they’ll face a similar fate with having to run a larger restrictor plate. I know, they call it a tapered spacer, but in reality, it’s a restrictor plate.
Dennis Setzer got the pole with Ron Hornaday sitting beside him. When the green flag dropped, Hornaday did what he’s known for and took the lead from Setzer. The trucks were going 3 wide in the turns and on the straights. On one of these 3 wide groups, Rick Crawford used it to his advantage and passed both The Onion and Colin Braun on Lap 3. On the next lap, Crawford slapped the wall with his rear quarter panel but kept on going with no apparent harm. By Lap 5, Hornaday had about a 3 truck-length lead over Setzer. We wouldn’t get to stay green for very long because on Lap 6, Bobby East got loose, spun, and put the rear end of his truck into the inside retaining wall for Caution #1.
When they restarted on Lap 10, Hornaday did his usual and took off like a rocket. On the next lap, The Onion got by Setzer for 2nd. By staying in line, The Onion and Setzer were slowly catching up on Hornaday by Lap 13. By Lap 17, the first three trucks had broken away from the rest of the field. While they were at commercial, the 2nd caution came out when the #15 truck of Billy Ballew cut a tire and spun. Everyone headed for the pits. The Onion used some pit strategy by taking a pair of scuffed tires which would save him a pair of sticker tires for later in the race. Rick Allen and Phil Parsons did their usual great job in the booth and they had crew chief Doug Richert in the booth with them. We got another dose of commercials and when they came back, the #15 and #09 trucks were in and out of the pit’s a couple of times for repairs and on Lap 25, the #15 truck went to the garage. Mike Skinner and one other truck stayed out for track position.
When the restart came on Lap 26, Skinner got a good jump on the rest of the field. Hornaday got around his teammate Jack Sprague for 2nd. The KHI trucks were running 2nd and 3rd. The other truck that had stayed out with Skinner was dropping like a rock through the field. On Lap 29, Setzer got by Benson for 5th. On the next lap, TJ Bell, The Onion, Braun, Darnell, and Rick Crawford were running side by side, nose to tail for 8th. By Lap 32, Hornaday and Sprague had chased down Skinner and were right on his back bumper. There was a great shot on Lap 34 in which you could see Hornaday signaling Sprague to run single file so they could catch and pass Skinner. The #15 truck returned to the track on Lap 35, 9 laps down. Then it was time for another batch of commercials.
While they were away, Hornaday passed Skinner for the lead and we got to see a replay of that. On Lap 53, Starr, Braun, and Crawford were fighting for 10th place while Hornaday and Sprague were pulling away from 3rd place Setzer. According to the booth, some team orders had come into play. Hornaday had to lead 81 laps to get 5 points for the most laps led, so Sprague had to be content with staying in 2nd.By Lap 57, Skinner had dropped back to 5th place and we heard from the booth that you could bet he was hoping for a caution and probably was complaining to his crew chief and NA$CAR about debris on the track. It must’ve worked because on Lap 60, Ms Terry DeBris, dressed as a St. Louis Cardinal, made an appearance. But as there wasn’t a camera there, we missed seeing her once again. Doug Richert couldn’t resist commenting that the debris must’ve been because of Tropical Storm Hannah. When they were exiting pit road, Colin Braun hit Johnny Benson’s truck on the driver’s side putting a fair size dent in it. Doug Richert estimated it to be about 6 inches deep.
The way the came off of pit road, Sprague had gotten the lead from Hornaday. After restarting on Lap 65, Hornaday got by Sprague on the back straight to retake the lead. You’ve got to love team orders. Then Hornaday, Sprague, The Onion, and Darnell were running nose to tail slowly pulling away from the rest of the trucks. Chad McCumbee had moved from his 20th place up to 9th. My buddy Ted Musgrave had moved up to 18th. By Lap 72, 3 trucks were out of the race which was sort of odd as the field was short a truck to start with (35 showed, 36 spots to race). Chrissy Wallace was running in 20th place with her dad spotting for her. Then there was a 7 lap break for commercials.
When the returned to the race, Terry Cook, Marc Davis, and Ted Musgrave were fighting for 15th place. On Lap 82, we got to see the patchwork that had been done on the #09 truck flapping in the breeze and he eventually was black flagged for it. By Lap 89, Keven Wood was in 23rd. Hornaday, Sprague, and The Onion were running nose to tail which led Rick Allen to make a few comments about the larger restrictor plate deal and how some drivers said it was an apple to oranges comparison because at Bristol, the Ford and Chevy teams were running short track engines and the Japanese brand trucks were running intermediate track engines. Just when the commentary was getting interesting, it was interrupted for more commercials.
When a race broke out on Lap 98, the commercials went to the wayside. Hornaday was still leading followed by Sprague, The Onion, Darnell, Braun, Skinner, Benson, Setzer, Starr, and Bell. On the next lap, we got a “through the field”. Things would be going along fine until Lap 103 when a spring rubber was spotted on the access road and we got Caution #4. This led to the last of the scheduled pit stops. When the rolled off of pit road, Sprague had the lead with Johnny Benson in 2nd. Hornaday dropped back to 7th. We got to see a replay of the trucks coming off of pit road and Hornaday squeezed his teammate into a stack of tires on the end of pit road causing some minor damage to his truck. Through a strange twist of fate, Sprague had a tire violation to go with hitting the stack of tires and Benson got the lead without a pass being made.
When they restarted on Lap 108, Benson and Hornaday had lapped traffic to contend with which led Hornaday to go 3 wide to pass Benson. On Lap 109 Hornaday had to go at it with Darnell with the two of them going back and forth for 1st place. On the following Lap, Rob Brent in the #19 truck spun and hit the wall bringing out Caution #5. Since there wasn’t much going on and nobody was pitting, we got to watch the clean-up before they interrupted the race with another bunch of commercials. We’d hear about the Lucky Dog, have more commercials, hear about Chrissy Wallace, have more commercials and finally restart on Lap 120 but didn’t get very far when Caution #6 came out. The #08 truck spun and collected 5 other trucks. Luckily they weren’t badly damaged and we got another restart on Lap 126.
It took Hornaday to Lap 130 to get the lead from Setzer. We got a great shot of Skinner, Starr, and Crawford going 3 wide on Lap 131 and on the next lap, Starr spun. The big question from the booth was whether to pit or not to pit. Doug Richert said that if you were in the Top 7, you’d stay out. When we got to see a replay of Starr’s spin, he had gotten into the side of Crawford and spun down the track into the inside wall. So we got to see some more clean-up and went back to commercial. When they came back, there was a plug for the race at Loudon before restarting on Lap 135.
Hornaday took a bit to get going, which is odd for him, but he finally started to pull away on the back straight. McCumbee, Musgrave, Braun, Lally, and Davis were running in a pack and Musgrave got around Braun for 12th place. On Lap 139, we got to see Benson and The Onion going at it for 3rd place. By the next lap, Hornaday had at least a 4 truck-length lead and Musgrave had moved to 11th place. Cautions breed cautions and on Lap 144, Justin Marks spun back in 20th place. The announce crew let us know that Justin would be heading off to do some ARCA races and that some other drivers would be driving the #9 truck. Lally got the lucky Dog and we had 21 trucks left on the lead lap.
By this point, Hornaday had led 99 laps, so if
Sprague could catch him, he could finally pass
him without worrying about team orders. They
took a break and Talked to Johnny Benson, who
was the in-race reporter, and asked him about
the pit stop and the dent he had. Johnny had to
be the master of understatement when he said
he only had a tire mark. When they restarted,
Sprague got by Skinner, Musgrave got by
Gaughan, and then Colin Braun was running side
by side with Gaughan. On Lap 152, Braun got by
McCumbee. On the next lap, The Onion and
Darnell were racing for 3rd. Then we got to see
Braun going around the lapped truck of Jack
Smith. Several laps later, Skinner at Crawford were battling for 7th. Hornaday was steadily keeping his distance between himself and Setzer and would keep it like that until he got the checkered flag. Setzer finished 2nd, Benson 3rd, The Onion 4th, and Sprague 5th. My buddy Ted finished 10th, Chad McCumbee finished 11th, Keven Wood was 15th, Marc Davis was 16th, and Chrissy Wallace 19th.
With his 4th win this season, Hornaday was able to cut Benson’s lead by 20 points. If he can keep cutting into that lead over the next 4 races, it could make for an exciting finish to the season. But it’s not over til it’s over. No artificial excitement needed, no artificial hyping, just some good, old fashioned racing.
With Hurricane Ike leaving a path of destruction in it’s’ wake, the USS Kearsarge is helping with relief and rescue efforts on Hispanola. That’s the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti in case you‘re not an old sea dog. Once again, our Navy shows just how much we help around the world with humanitarian efforts, so my thanks to the crew of the Kearsarge.
Motherhood, Apple Pie, and John Wayne
Mad Mikie
Curmudgeon at Large
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