The 2011 Truck Series season started on a high note in Daytona with 46 trucks on the entry list and an emotional win by Michael Waltrip on the 10th anniversary of his Daytona 500 win. In the weeks and months that followed, the field began to thin.
First, Randy Moss Motorsports shut down it’s second team with Tayler Malsam before the trucks reached Martinsville in April. Then Vision Aviation Racing dropped from two teams to one before completely closing down in mid-May.
Germain Racing followed up in June by shutting down Justin Lofton’s team. Lofton left for Eddie Sharp Racing, where Craig Goess had recently departed.
Randy Moss Motorsports pulled the plug in July, forming an “alliance” with Germain Racing and handing over sponsor Navistar for the remainder of the year.
Since that time Kevin Harvick Inc. has announced it will be shutting down its truck teams at the end of the season and Germain Racing has said it will scale back.
To say the least there has been a lot of change in the series this season. It’s incredible to see some of the mainstays, including RMM/David Dollar (in the sport since 1997) and KHI either unable or unwilling to continue. It has to provide some pause for those in charge.
Well paying sponsorships are few and far between, purses are pitiful and the series is comparatively expensive to run. To be fair, I think NASCAR recognizes that. One notable place they’ve been making visible changes is in the schedule.
The series has shifted away from the West Coast swings, ending it’s run at California and only going to Phoenix once a year, while adding stops closer to home at Rockingham and Iowa. We’ve also seen them incorporating or considering shorter tracks. Of course, smaller tracks means fewer trucks are necessary, which means, generally speaking, less needs to be spent on equipment.
The Truck Series has walked away from its roots in recent years – see stops at Daytona, Talladega and Pocono – and for the sake of growth has begun to push out those who supported it for so long. That said, the exit of KHI or any of these other teams is by no means a death knell to the series – great teams like Thorsport, Richard Childress Racing and Kyle Busch Motorsports, among others, continue to support it. But we all need to be thoroughly considering the reasons those who exited did so.
The Truck Series continues to be popular with fans, and TV viewership is growing. Still, NASCAR needs to be making tough decisions and rectifying the problems at hand if they want the series to be anything more than a place for start-and-park teams, funded drivers and has-beens/never-weres looking for a cheaper barrier to entry. I think it’s better than that.
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I started to think about this post a few weeks ago. At the time, Germain Racing, for the second season in a row, was threatening to shut down Todd Bodine’s #30 team for a lack of sponsorship. It was stunning to think the reigning series championship was about to be parked for a lack of sponsorship. The troubles at Germain though are nothing new for Series champions. Consider the following cases.
NASCAR veteran Ted Musgrave won the 2005 Truck Series championship driving for Jim Smith and Ultra Motorsports. The two had a long and fruitful run together including 16 wins, 12 poles and that one championship. Not long after winning in ’05 though the team closed the doors after losing support from Mopar and failing to get support from Ford.
Musgrave was lucky enough to find another ride with Germain for the following two seasons, but never matched his success with Ultra. He had a short stint with HT Motorsports before exiting the sport mid way through the 2008 season.
Ron Hornaday, Jr. won championships in 2007 and 2009 and has undoubtedly had a very successful run with Kevin Harvick Inc. and Dale Earnhardt Inc. before that. It was after Hornaday’s 2009 championship that his long time crew chief Rick Ren left KHI for the newly created Kyle Busch Motorsports.
Since then Hornaday has won just three races (compare that to six each in 2008 and 2009) and has just 17 top-fives (compare to 15 in 2009 and 14 in 2008) and 20 top-tens (compare to 20 in 2009 and 18 in 2008).
Certainly winning the championship hasn’t been devastating to Hornaday’s career, but the once dominant team is no more. Losing Rick Ren was nothing short of very bad luck.
The saddest case of all is Johnny Benson who won the 2008 Truck Series championship with Bill Davis Racing. Benson joined the team in 2004 and together they scored 14 wins, 50 top-fives and 72 top-tens. Benson though faced a fate similar to his contemporary Ted Musgrave when the team shut down shortly after the end of the season.
Tom Deloach and Red Horse Racing brought Benson on in 2009 but he made it just eight races before the team was shut down due to a lack of sponsorship. Just a week after that Benson was seriously injured in a SuperModified race.
It looked like Benson may have a chance to return in 2010 with Kyle Busch Motorsports, but sponsorship never materialized and Benson raced just a few times for various organizations.
That brings us back to Todd Bodine. He received a reversal of fortune after Randy Moss Motorsports, on its last legs but with a very lucrative sponsorship deal, agreed to a “partnership” with Germain to keep Bodine in a ride through the end of the season.
Is there a curse? Maybe not. But in the last six seasons at least, it’s undeniable that there are some strange instances of bad luck for the series’ championship winner.
In recent years, layoffs at the end of the NASCAR season have become the norm. And this season hasn’t been any different (though the extent of the layoffs has been less severe than in recent years). Joining the rank-and-file employees on the unemployment line in 2010 are two drivers from prominent programs. I doubt either of them though were surprised.
Enter Scott Speed and Colin Braun.
During his three seasons at the various levels of NASCAR, Scott Speed found some success and quite a bit of struggle.
2008 was a banner year for the flamboyant former F1 driver. He scored four ARCA Series wins, one Truck Series win, and he nearly won the ARCA championship. He was a promising prospect for Red Bull Racing that, at the time, had Brian Vickers and a struggling AJ Allmendinger.
And so began the trouble for Speed, who was thrown into the Cup Series in 2009 with little stock car experience under his belt. Like so many before, Speed wasn’t given much time to develop and was never able to do much in a Cup car. Add on top of his lack of development time, the fact that Red Bull is, at best, a mid-tier team, Scott never really had much of a chance.
Braun got his first full NASCAR season in 2008, running for a Roush Truck team that had a lot of success behind it. In two seasons in the Truck Series though Braun scored one win, and didn’t do much else. It’s of note that in those two seasons (a total of 50 races) Braun had 10 DNFs as a result of wrecks.
Despite a less than successful run in the Truck Series, Roush moved Braun to the Nationwide Series this season with plans to run the full schedule. Eight races into the season though Braun was yanked from the ride after five wreck related DNFs and a severe drop in the points. He was allowed to run 16 more races this season – his highest finish was seventh.
For these two guys, their individual releases were a long time coming. Neither lived up to expectations. For Speed the lack of development time is likely what hurt him the most. With Red Bull’s questionable performance however, more development time may or may not have made a difference.
With Braun, development time wasn’t an issue. In fact, he was given far more opportunity to showcase his skills and talent than most drivers in similar situations. After 82 NASCAR starts, and little to show for it, Jack Roush probably made the right decision cutting him loose.
What stinks for both of these guys at this point is the lack of time they now have to find another ride. Something tells me neither will find much opportunity in NASCAR for 2011.
TC played the ‘NASCAR homer’ in his post yesterday, so I figured I’d balance out the week and criticize NASCAR today.
The Truck Series is making their Pocono debut this weekend and you can count me among those not excited. In fact I’m a little irritated the sanctioning body added this event to the schedule (though I’m excited for Darlington).
For a long time around here I’ve been making the argument that the Truck Series needs a purpose – desperately. It lies somewhere in between the Friday night show and the senior tour. It’s fun to watch, but in the grander scheme of the sport it doesn’t really have much value.
Personally I’d like to see the sport take up something resembling the role it had when it debuted back in 1995: tough trucks with tough drivers and rough racing on short tracks in areas that don’t normally get big time NASCAR racing. I digress.
Pocono is just not the right place for the series. How many have you have watched an ARCA race at Pocono? It’s a miserable experience. You spend a good portion of the race under caution because half the field has wrecked; when they finally do race, it’s follow the leader.
Guess what you can expect from the Trucks on Saturday? The same thing. With Denny Hamlin, and Kasey Kahne in the field, I think it’s probably a good bet that it’s not going to be a great race for the series regulars. On top of that, it’s Pocono.
Sure they’re changing the qualifying procedure, but really do many of you watch Truck Series qualifying? Do you care?
I don’t mean to be down on this, really. The Poconos are beautiful and there really is a great fan base up there. It’s just that the track doesn’t generally provide for much excitement.
Perhaps this thing will be successful. I hope for the sake of the series it is. But given the less than spectacular history of Pocono, and a field that includes two Cup Series regulars (and Pocono vets), I’m putting my money on it being a boring race, with a Cup driver winning.
Series Director Wayne Auton is very excited for this. I guess that’s a good thing – at least somebody is.