Milestones in NASCAR often are taken for granted, sometimes even overlooked.
Sure, rattling off the impressive resumes of different drivers and teams has become second nature to some. But for the sport itself chunks of its history get pushed further and further from the memory bank with each race weekend.
The Camping World Truck Series has reached a milestone far too great to glance over.
Saturday, the green flag will drop for the 500th time over a Truck Series race with the running of the UNOH 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. It comes 21 years after the series debuted in 1995.
In that time, it has grown from a sanctioning body primarily running short tracks on the west coast to a national NASCAR series competing all over the United States and in Canada. They’ve crown 13 different champions. It helped make the likes of Ron Hornaday Jr., Todd Bodine, Jack Sprague, Mike Skinner and many more household names.
To many, these men are part of the foundation of what is now the Camping World Truck Series. Without them, it might now have grown into the series it is today.
Which means there are no better men to tell the story of the Truck Series reaching 500.
In came about in the early 1990s when a group of off-road racers – Jim Venable, Jim Smith, Dick Landfield and Frank Vessels – from Southern California had the idea of trying to put their trucks on pavement. Gary Collins, who was a fabricator from Bakersfield, ended up building a prototype of what would be the first truck, and once NASCAR saw it, an idea was born of creating a new series.
Owen Kearns, longtime communications manager of the Truck Series: I thought it was a great idea (for a Truck Series) given the fact all the people that were really talking about it were people from the west coast where I was. Of course you had the off-road contingent; some that I knew, some that I didn’t. The fellow that built the first truck, Gary Collins here in Bakersfield, I knew that he and his family at one time had been the track announcer at their racetrack, Mesa Marin Raceway. So between the off-roaders and NASCAR getting involved, it seemed to me like a pretty much can’t miss concept.
Todd Bodine, 22 career wins, two-time Truck Series champion: A lot of people thought (NASCAR) was crazy, I actually thought it was a pretty cool idea. Our country really depends on trucks and pickups to get around; everybody’s got a pickup truck. It was only natural to be able to get our sport involved with pickups, to get the public excited. So I thought it was a good idea.
Mike Skinner, 1995 Truck Series champion with 28 career wins: I was working 15 hours a day for Richard Petty’s first cousin, Gene Petty, and at the time we were building Busch cars and running a full schedule in late models. So we were just was really, really busy. But it’s crazy, I got a phone call one day when I was in the shop from Richard Childress wanting to know if I was interested in driving this truck he was going to have. I was like, no, not really. I said if Dale Earnhardt calls in sick I’ll come drive that 3 car, but I don’t really need a truck driving job.
A week or so later I found out oh my gosh, I just been offered the best ride I could have ever got in my whole life and I turned the man down. Soon as I got up to date I called him back and said, ‘hey, you haven’t hired anybody yet, can I come over and talk to you?’ So, they were well underway of forming this thing before I even knew what was going on. It was a pleasant surprise for me when I got a call from somebody like Richard Childress to drive for.
It became the NASCAR SuperTruck Series by Craftsman and after rolling the concept out at exhibition races, the first official race was scheduled for February 5, 1995, at Phoenix International Raceway. Mike Skinner not only won that race but also went on to win the first championship.
Kearns: The first race had a lot of racing leading up to it. We had four demonstration races in which we took four or five trucks and drivers around to some different short tracks and introduced the concept to the fans to see how they accepted it. Then we had a series of races at Tucson Raceway Park in the winter, which we called Winter Heat that was broadcast on The Nashville Network (TNN). I think we had three of those. So when we got to the first (official) series race, we had broken the racers in pretty well. But we still didn’t really know how many trucks we were going to have. There was a lot of interest in it because of the fact pretty big name teams started off with us and kind of really got everybody thinking about it. Figured if Dale Earnhardt is going to have a truck team, and Rick Hendrick is going to have a truck team and several of the others then there must really be something to this.
Jack Sprague, 28 career wins, three-time Truck Series champion: I remember pulling in (at Phoenix) and being totally intimidated for the simple fact that our team was a little team, there was only four of us, and we had one truck. We pull in there, and all these Cup owners had trucks. That’s a long way to way to go to not make the race, so I was worried about that because we drove out there. But it all worked out fine. We ran fifth and got a little confidence and decided we could do this.
Skinner: It’s one of those iconic times in your life like when your children are born or when you get married, or you have something go on like what happened at Phoenix. We’d been to Tucson a couple of times for the Winter Heat races with some success, won one of those and sat on a pole. Getting to Phoenix at that point in time there was four, five, six or I don’t know how many Cup drivers was in that race that day, but there was a few, and Terry Labonte had a pretty hot hand at Phoenix, and he was in the prime of his career, so to be able to beat Terry in a Hendrick truck for the first race out I really felt like man, it was one of the neatest things that ever happened in my life at that time.
Ron Hornaday, all-time Truck Series wins leader (51) and champion (four): I sat on the pole I know that. We had Action Collectables on the side of (team owner Dale) Earnhardt’s truck. It was bright red. And a lot of drivers got sent home that day. We had a lot of trucks there.
Over time, the series started to evolve, becoming the Craftsman Truck Series from 1996 to 2008, with Camping World taking over the title rights in 2009. From the start, it had the support of TV networks with the likes of TNN, CBS and ESPN broadcasting races. As the series expanded it also went from being a place where NASCAR veterans were able to extend their careers, to a stepping-stone for drivers working their way into the sport. Today, Sprint Cup drivers are part of the ownership fold as a way to help breed talent. The series rapid growth and great racing also quickly made it a success with fans.
Bodine: The series itself I think started as a great place for drivers who kind of were looking for a place to go, looking for a place to be. The Skinner’s and Hornaday’s, the Sprague’s and Musgrave’s. Rick Crawford and the guys that were Cup drivers at the time or Busch drivers, it gave us all a place to be when there were no opportunities for us in the Cup Series. And even when we had great careers in Cup and maybe we just, for a lack of a better term, got rotated out of the series, it gave us a great place to go race and have fun.
I really believe that’s probably the biggest contributing factor to why the series has grown so much in popularity and in audience. Because we had names and drivers that were recognizable to the average race fan and the average race fan enjoyed it because they got to see those guys race some more. With us having all that experience the racing was fantastic. We always put on a great show, and everybody enjoyed it, so I believe that’s a lot of the contributing factors of why the popularity grew so fast.
Kearns: The fact we had drivers that had raced in the Sprint Cup Series and had done well helped sell the Truck Series. It also, as Bodine said, gave them the opportunity to extend their careers. Even more so, it gave a lot of drivers from out West, Ron Hornaday, Rick Carelli, and several others the opportunity to get into a national series with NASCAR that they really hadn’t had the opportunity to do so before because it was really next to impossible to go from what was Winston West, even though it was a Cup car, to the Sprint Cup Series. Maybe even more difficult to get into the Busch Series, which was really kind of more of less a series for drivers and owners that were in the south.
We used to talk about the fact you had perhaps 30 trucks out there, well you had not only 30 drivers that had a job but you had crew members that all had jobs and owners that got to race, and this didn’t exist before. So you really opened the doors for a lot of people that would like to be full-time racers but didn’t have the opportunity to be that way.
Hornaday: I figure it was a stepping-stone to learning how to do a pit stop. When we first started we didn’t do pit stops; we had halfway breaks and then it started to become pit stops. It was definitely a good stepping-stone. And the owners were Cup owners and Cup drivers. I had Dale and Richard Childress, You start naming everybody and they all come or NASCAR forced their hand to get involved in this Truck Series to make it work or whatever, but everybody seemed like they wanted to be a part of it. I was just fortune enough to have Dale call me and run that many races.
Sprague: I absolutely agree with everything said. It opened up 34 or 35 more seats to drivers that weren’t able to get into the Busch Series or the Cup Series. It opened up more rides and gave more good drivers opportunities.
Skinner: Here’s a funny story for you … At that time, Jack Sprague was no spring chicken but he was young. Everybody thought he’s too young; nobody wanted to put him in a Cup car. He drove for Rick Hendrick, but he drove a truck, and it was his best opportunity and he was an amazingly talented driver. He fit in the trucks, but everybody thought he was too young to drive a Cup car. Nowadays, if you’re old enough to shave you’re too old to get in at the bottom level. It’s crazy how our sport has changed, but Jack did well, and so did Todd (Bodine) and Ron (Hornaday). Todd came in later but man; it was Teddy Musgrave and Joe Ruttman and Hornaday and Jack (Sprague) and myself and Butch Miller.
There were some West Coast guys out there that were some really, really talented guys and we had some great battles in the early days of the Truck Series that I really feel helped carry the trucks to the next level. It’s just like Cup or like anything else, there’s years not as exciting as others but, for the most part, the Truck Series has been an amazing series and some really, really good Sprint Cup stars have come out of the Truck Series. So Bill France Jr. and those four guys out on the West Coast that came up with this thing, man, they hit a home run.
Hornaday: I wasn’t racing at the time they went to Daytona, and I thought NASCAR was crazy to do that and the following year I got the opportunity to drive Ricky Hendrick’s truck down there. And I got out after practice and went over and praised NASCAR for what they’d done with the Truck Series with the aerodynamic packages and how good they handled because they’re not so unpredictable on the racetrack. So they’ve done a great job, and they’ve done their homework to take them to big tracks. From coming from half-mile racetracks to go to Daytona and Talladega, it’s pretty cool. And it put us in the limelight of a lot of people. And a lot of fans love the trucks just because they can relate themselves with a truck. How many people have a truck where they put their wood in the back and their brush in the back or their guns or whatever. A lot of people related to it, and it took off big.
As the Truck Series became a staple in NASCAR, so too did the drivers, such as Bodine, Sprague, Skinner, and Hornaday. Each put their names in the history books as champions while setting records many drivers in the series are still chasing today. And all those memorable moments they created along the way serve as the best Truck Series stories today.
Kearns: I kind of like to tell the story and I don’t know if this is the greatest memory, but it’s a fun memory and I do miss this racetrack: Flemington Speedway in New Jersey. You would have probably figured that with Flemington and the Modifieds this might be the last place the trucks would make an impact, but I mean those fans came in there, and they camped and they were just hanging from the rafters, literally.
One thing that Flemington did not have, it did not have much of anything that you could call a press box. In fact, it didn’t have a press box at all. Well, what they did was they nailed some boards up in a tree that was outside Turn 1, outside the grandstand and we climbed up into the tree and we took notes and basically passed them out to the people that were there. I thought that was kind of cool.
Bodine: There are a lot of great moments but probably the biggest win for myself was Atlanta in 2006. At the end, Mark Martin was beating me and with like four laps to go he came up on some lap trucks and went four-wide through the lap trucks and I passed him to get the win. Mark Martin – hero is not the right word, but I’ve idolized and respected what he’s done in the sport and the kind of person he’s been and become. For me to be able to beat him by outracing him that was very, very special to me. Probably the biggest moment for me, obviously, is winning the championship.
Sprague: Probably winning Daytona with the Wyler’s. That was pretty cool. The championships were great, but I never thought I’d win Daytona and to be able to win Daytona with them guys, that was a pretty awesome deal right there. I like that one. Plus, it was my last win, so that’s cool, too.
Skinner: Phoenix stands up pretty tall, but we won a couple races at Martinsville that was just amazing. And the Bristol win for Bill and Gail Davis really stands out big time in my mind. There are so many that it’s hard to put one in front of the other but winning the Phoenix race was big. Winning Las Vegas was really big. But winning a race at Bristol, are you kidding me? For Bill and Gale Davis, best damn day probably in front of everything.
Hornaday: I guess of all of them the first championship with Dale spotting. That’s Mr. Earnhardt to us. The last 15 laps it was like I didn’t have nobody on the radio. Well, he was running underneath the racetrack to get back to victory lane because he knew we were going to win the championship. That’s the one that sticks out in my head the most is when the last 15 laps because I was a basket case at the start of the race. And he says you got your hands full, it’s all in your hands now. It just put tears in my eyes saying everything depends on that last race, so that’s probably the most thing that stands out. And all the great people I’ve known and know and met through the Truck Series is pretty damn cool.
More of the Camping World Truck Series history will be written not only this Saturday but beyond. The ability to do so, however, is what will forever stick with Owen Kearns, who will be able to say not only was he there for the series first and 500th race, but so many in-between.
Kearns: One thing I really like is the fact they brought the road races back with the race in Canada, and, of course, they got Eldora, which just absolutely is a home run. I miss some of the races, for example, the Indianapolis Raceway Park race that was always kind of a kickoff for the big Brickyard weekend, but I think Eldora has trumped that and then some. I don’t see anything that I don’t like about (the series today). I’m pretty proud of the fact that the growth factor has continued to produce good TV ratings; FOX has stepped up and signed a long-term contract.
There were people back the second, third, fourth year of the series that said, yeah this was great but it isn’t going to last. It’s going away. There was a lot of negativity but it’s come a long way since a few of the naysayers said that it wasn’t going to last, and I think a lot of that is due to FOX and the then SPEED Channel. Speed really grabbed the thing by the horns and got fully behind it and really took it to another level.