Trucks at Talladega
By:  Wayne Auton
"What a difference a week makes. One week, we're running at one of the smallest tracks on the schedule—at Martinsville Speedway. Now, we're heading to the largest track—Talladega Superspeedway. Obviously, we'll be looking at two different kinds of races, with two different attitudes.

The statistics from the first five are particularly telling. The top three drivers in short-track statistics also sit in the top three of the series points standings.

Tops among the short-track drivers is points leader Ron Hornaday Jr. (#33 VFW Chevrolet). At those tracks under one mile in length (which include Martinsville, Iowa, O'Reilly Raceway Park, Bristol and Memphis), Hornaday leads the series with a Driver Rating of 130.3, an Average Running Position of 3.8 and 150 Fastest Laps Run. Along with two short-track wins (at ORP and Memphis), he is the only driver to finish in the top five in all five short-track races this season.

Ranking statistically second at the short tracks is Mike Skinner (#5 PC*MILER Toyota), who nabbed a victory at Iowa. In the five short-track races, Skinner has a Driver Rating of 117.1, an Average Running Position of 6.9, 144 Fastest Laps Run and a series-high 272 Laps Led.

Matt Crafton (#88 Menards Chevrolet) has compiled the third-best short track Driver Rating, with a 104.2. He also has four top 10s, an Average Running Position of 6.6 and 52 Fastest Laps Run.

Marne, MI— It was the final race of the 2009 season and, like most nights, rain played a role in the racing program.   Tom Thomas won the CRA race, Dalton Haney was victorious in the Young Gun division and Tim DeVos got the win in the Burnips Equipment 4-Cylider division.  The last of Berlin’s champions were crowned; Kelsey Steele won the Young Gun Championship and Dan Reimersma won the 4-Cylinder Championship.

The Burnips Equipment 4-Cylinders started the show, running a 30-lap feature.  #T11 Jim Rhodes and #12 Jay Platz lead the field to the green flag.  Platz took the lead early while the rest of the field was bottled up.  The #7 of Ryan Hamm was giving chase, but both cars were blown away on lap 7 by #20 Tim DeVos.  By lap 10, the field was spread out and DeVos was slicing through the field.  The first caution of this race came on lap 17 when #20 Tyler Nawrocki’s car came to a stop in turn 3.  On the restart, DeVos continued to lead and the battle for second was on between Hamm, #14 Jason DeVos, #100 Jason Scheid, #13 Dan Reimersma and #74 Paul Namey.   Scheid was the first to clear that battle, rocketing to second and trying to run down DeVos.  Lap 22 saw the final caution of the race; Hamm was off of the backstretch.  Bunching the field back up made no difference to Devos, he dominated the race and got his second win of the season.  The rest of the top ten were Scheid, J. DeVos, Reimersma, Namey, Platz, #19 Dave Avink, #9 Nick Curtis, #01 Rob Shoemaker and #51 Mel Parsons.  Reimersma, who has been dominant all season long, won the championship by 24 points over Scheid. 

Up next were the cars of the Young Gun division, #19 Dalton Haney started on the pole with #48 Seth Moody on his outside.  Haney maintained his starting position and the battle was on for 2^nd between #32 Gabe Ensing and #6 Brandon Hermiller on lap 7 and the pair was catching up with Haney.   On lap 13, they were right on his bumper and #101 Lauren Bush joined the battle.   The top 4 ran nose-to-tail and Hermiller was trying to take second from Ensing on the outside.  Ensing threw the block on the backstretch and by the time they reached turn 4, Ensing had spun on lap 17.  Haney continued to lead the final three laps to get his first win of the season.  The rest of the finishing order was Bush, #18 Mitch Meppelink, Hermiller, #16 Kelsey Steele, Ensing and Moody.   Kelsey Steele won the championship by 118 points over Ensing.

The CRA Super Series provided the finale of the night and of the 2009 season, #81 Terry Fisher, Jr. and #21 Chris Koslek started on the front row.  The field was very racing from the get-go, but they didn’t get far in to the 125-lap feature before the caution was displayed; the #31 of Aaron Pierce spun on the frontstretch.  Fisher continued to lead, stretching it out while #161 Fred Campbell was challenging Koslek for second, took the position and #222 Caleb Bisacky, #155 Chris Anthony and #16 Tom Thomas were also mixing it up with Koslek.    On lap 32, the field was back to single-file racing and on lap 43, Campbell took the lead and Fisher was falling back.  Series point leaders #72 Scott Hantz and #61 John VanDoorn were both looking for the 10^th position, putting on a great battle.  Anthony caught up with Koslek on lap 55 to try to take second and on lap 17, the pair was still embroiled.   Caution was out again on lap 73 when #20 Brian Campbell’s engine blew.  After clean up was complete, leader Fred Campbell got a good start, but on lap 77, Koslek took the lead, Anthony advanced to second and Thomas to third while Campbell went back to fourth.   The top three were running very close and on lap 82, Thomas was up to second and going after Koslek for the lead.  They raced side by side for two laps before Thomas took the lead on lap 86 and pulled away from the field.   With 25 laps to go, Thomas was working traffic and all of his progress got erased when caution came out on lap 117.  The field was bunched back up, tires cooled off and on the restart, Thomas got away as Anthony was working on Koslek, took the position, but there just was not enough time to catch Thomas.  Thomas got the win and the rest of the top ten were Anthony, Koslek, #51 Alec Carll, Hantz, Campbell, VanDoorn, Bisacky, #26 Rick Turner and #2 Kenny Tweedy.

The School Bus races signaled the end of the night and the end of the 2009 racing season.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in racing in 35 years,” says Skinner, the 1995 series champion. “I am so shocked that we haven’t got somebody hurt with that stupid rule. It’s horrible, and it has bit us.  It probably cost us from winning two or three races this year that we felt like we were going to win. The pit-road rule has been horrible, and it hasn’t saved us any money.”  Skinner is not alone in thinking that the policy, implemented before the 2009 season as a cost-cutting measure, is in need of modifying – if not altogether being scrapped. 

The rule was initially instituted to help teams save money because it reduced the number of men a team could have over pit wall from seven to five. But it also forced drivers to make separate stops for tires and fuel – potentially jumbling up the running order and increasing the possibility that a caution in the middle of a series of green-flag stops could impact the outcome of a race.

Like Skinner, second-place points contender Matt Crafton claims that the rule has actually cost him one or more potential victories. Sprint Cup regular and occasional Truck series driver Ryan Newman blamed the rule for causing him to lose significant track position in the August Truck race at Bristol, where he forgot to make a second stop for fuel and had to pit out of sequence. He never completely recovered, and later called the series’ pit procedures “goofy” and “bad.”

Even some of those who haven’t been hampered by the rule would prefer that it be overhauled.  “It has been successful with us, and we’ve won five races this year [with part-time Truck driver Kyle Busch] with the current configuration,” team owner Billy Ballew says, “but as far as preference-wise, I prefer it like it was: seven people over the wall, tires, gas, whatever you want to do at any given stop.”

Rick Ren, crew chief for points leader Ron Hornaday, understands why NASCAR opted to make the rule, but that doesn’t mean he supports the policy.  “I don’t care for it,” Ren says. “I haven’t cared for it all year. It’s the rules that we’ve been dealt, and we have to deal within them. I’ve made a couple mistakes early in the year on the new pit-road rules, and I sat down and blamed myself for having some finishes that didn’t need to be where they were just because of mistakes. … It just kind of bites you.  When you’re on a big race track that doesn’t have many yellows, it’s hard to get back on the lead lap. … I think the rules should be the same in all three [of NASCAR’s national] divisions so that everybody is doing it the same way. They’re doing it for cost-cutting measures and I understand that, so that’s when I wear my business hat. When I’m wearing my racer hat, I don’t like it.”

Skinner and fellow veteran Rick Crawford suggest the rule might also jeopardize competitors’ safety because it makes teams willing to leave their drivers on the track on older tires to avoid a second pit stop and the risk of getting trapped a lap down.

The longer drivers stay out on worn rubber, the more likely it is that a tire might blow.  “What happens is you get painted in such a box when you have to make a green-flag stop that you do one of two things,” Skinner says. “You either just take fuel so you can go on – then you’re out there on worn-out tires, and that’s very, very dangerous. ... Or you come in there and you get two laps down and the caution comes out. So it’s not a good thing. I don’t really know anybody who likes it, and I don’t think the fans like it.”

Crawford doesn’t see where forcing teams to have fewer men over the wall has done much to relieve the financial burden on teams in a sluggish economy. And he believes any savings haven’t been enough to justify drivers having to make separate stops for tires and fuel.

“I’m not a big fan of it at all. … It took two people off the road, reducing our roster and our expenses, but it confused a lot of people,” says Crawford, a series regular since 1997. “It confused drivers, it confused teams, it confused race fans, and I think that’s what’s most important is the race fans. Now, did we save myself half a million dollars? No. We [have] probably saved in the thousands, in the low thousands.”

Truck Series Director Wayne Auton says that NASCAR is aware that the rule hasn’t been popular among some drivers and teams and that the sanctioning body is considering changes for 2010.

Even if teams are permitted to once again get tires and fuel at the same time, however, it appears that a crew chief will still have to designate a maximum of 12 active crew members for each event. Active crew members include the crew chief, driver, spotter and crew members that enter the truck servicing area of pit road during the race.

The 12-member limit and a rule not allowing teams to use three different engines in three consecutive events (excluding the races at Daytona and Talladega) were also implemented in the offseason to help manage competition costs.

"The five crew members over the wall has done its job by getting new owners into the garage this year,” Auton says. “We are up on new team owners about 20 percent over last year. It has been a welcome rule change by some and also not by some. Overall, we feel the rule has worked to achieve the main goal, which was helping owners with their budgets.

“The 12-crew member limit and no scorers have definitely played into the owners’ pockets to help out. This limitation of crew members will stay in place for 2010. We are very pleased with how this has worked out."

NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton says the sanctioning body is also leaning toward implementing double-file restarts for the Truck series next year, as it already has for the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series.