The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series teams will tangle at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis Friday night, site of the Power Stroke Diesel 200, race No. 14 of 25 on the NCTS calendar this season. ORP is a place where the truck drivers definitely don't play nice together, a claustrophobic 0.686-mile oval where the trucks will be bumping and grinding all race long. If nothing else, Friday night's battle ought to shuffle the points standings again.
If recent history is any indication, the driver to watch for on Friday night will be Ron Hornaday Jr., the defending series champion and defending race winner. Hornaday's teammate at Kevin Harvick Inc., Jack Sprague, is also a two-time ORP Truck winner, and his American Commercial Lines No. 2 Chevy ought to run well on Friday night.
The other two-time ORP NCTS winner in the field Friday will be the Toyota Tundra-sponsored No. 5 of Mike Skinner, who is fifth in points and has a streak of nine consecutive top-10 finishes. And his Bill Davis Racing teammates, Johnny Benson and Michael Annett are coming off a 1-2 finish last week at Kentucky Speedway. Wyler.com Toyota driver Terry Cook, who has quietly moved to seventh in points, has one victory and one runner-up finish each at ORP, though his last top-five came here in 2002.
Anytime the NCTS Series races at ORP, Rick Crawford and the Power Stroke by Diesel International Ford F-150 are threats to win.
Don't count out short-track ace Dennis Setzer, either.
Add it all up, and it should be a wide-open — and very physical — battle on Friday night. Qualifying is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. EDT Friday, with the race set for 8 p.m. that evening. Both will be televised live on SPEED.
With 25 Nextel Cup drivers entered in Saturday’s Busch Series event, Bobby Hamilton, Jr. and the remaining 17 Busch Series drivers knew there would be nothing easy about the USG Durock 300. The race had all the makings for domination by the Cup drivers. The 25 Cup drivers were able to take advantage of nearly three times the amount of practice over the weekend in sweeping 17 of the top 20 positions on the 1.5 mile superspeedway. The advantages were just too strong for the 25 Cup drivers in the field. Hamilton crossed the finish line in the 29th position.
“Today was very tough for us, we did all we could with the practice we had to work with,” Hamilton said. “My guys worked hard on the Eckrich / McDonald’s Ford all weekend. We were real excited to have Eckrich on board our car this weekend. Now we can go to St. Louis and O’Reilly Raceway Park the next two weeks for what should be very good races for our team. We have our focus on moving up into the top-five in the point’s race and these next few weeks will be very important for us.”
Kevin Harvick captured the win, leading Matt Kenseth across the finish line.
Constant Reader knows I am a Bobby Hamilton Jr. fan. But what this article doesn't say is that Bobby was the seventh highest Busch regular. For whatever reason, Team Rensi's performance wasn't even up to their normal "Busch Regular" standards on Saturday.
Granted, this article does ease the pain of the disappointment of the 29th place finish to some degree.
Still, why did David Gilliland, driving similar Team Rensi equipment, finish 27th if it was all about practice? It seems to me that Rensi's equipment simply isn't up to the quality of the Nextel Cup operation's Busch cars. I would like to see Rensi admit this and Bobby's handlers and he himself complain a little less about the practice issue.
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