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Is it possible to be a successful, competitive team and not be located in Charlotte (or near it)?

This is something I was thinking about today as I saw the announcement that Regan Smith had re-signed with Furniture Row Motorsports through 2012. The Denver, Colo. based team has fielded a car in NASCAR since 2005.

Now don’t get me wrong, I write this not to bash the guys at Furniture Row. They certainly are able to do a lot given the difficulty of their situation. The fact is though, being in Denver is not ideal for any part of the operation of a NASCAR team.

While Furniture Row gets their chassis and engines from Childress, they are at a distinct disadvantage being away from the geographic center of NASCAR. They don’t have the pool of personnel to draw from (heck, even Petty Enterprises, in late 2007 moved closer in to Mooresville, NC because of difficulty in finding/retaining quality help willing to commute to Randleman), and they aren’t close to the equipment suppliers. Perhaps most importantly, they don’t have easy access to the technical support (the wind tunnels, k-rigs, shaker rigs, etc.) that all of their competitors do.

That said there are a couple of relative success stories.

Orleans Racing operated out of Las Vegas for years. Brendan Gaughan, driving for his family owned team, scored eight Truck Series wins and came very close to winning a championship in 2003. Though the team didn’t have as much luck upon Gaughan’s return in 2005 (they shut down in 2007), they ran a tight ship and maintained solid equipment. Still, the Gaughans spent a lot of money keeping up with their counterparts back in North Carolina.

Another relative success story is Thorsport Racing out of Sandusky, Ohio. The team has fielded a truck since 1996. While they haven’t been prolific in victory lane (they have just two wins in 464 starts), Matt Crafton has finished in the top-10 in points in four of the last five seasons (including second in 2009).

Still, running in the Truck Series is vastly different than running in the Cup Series. Thorsport gets a lot of technical support from Kevin Harvick Inc. and the Gaughans have a lot of money (thanks to the Coast Casinos, Southpoint and Boyd Gaming) – not to mention the length of schedules and lower budgets across the board.

Even with stable funding, I think there is a limit to how successful a team can be when they’re not in the area. You’ve got to hand it to Barney Visser though he is committed to making his race team work.

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What started out as a tension filled weekend between the likes of Kevin Harvick Inc. and Thorsport Racing ended up turning into a bizarre display of teammate on teammate crime.  Hey Harvick, if there is one driver that you can be damn sure isn’t going to pull over for you, it’s Ron Hornaday.

After Thorsport driver Matt Crafton was involved in an incident at Gateway the weekend before that ended with point leader Hornaday in the garage with a destroyed truck, rumors began to circulate about possible payback at New Hampshire.  Harvick entered himself into the race in a third truck and proceeded to harass Crafton in both practice and the race.  But the big hit never came. 

Instead, Harvick and Hornaday battled over the final laps while Kyle Busch ran away with the win.  After the race, Harvick expressed his anger over Hornaday not letting him by.  Harvick’s rationale was that his truck was faster, as he was on fresher tires, and if he could get by Hornaday he might have something for Busch.  But Hornaday stood his ground and Harvick was not able to complete the pass.  Harvick couldn’t understand why Hornaday’s spotter (Rick Carelli) and crew chief (Rick Ren) didn’t inform the veteran driver that Harvick wanted by.

You want to know why they didn’t say anything Kevin?  Because Hornaday is racing for a championship.  Isn’t that what you hired him to do?  Win championships?  You certainly don’t do that by letting people by.

Team orders don’t normally bear their ugly head in NASCAR, and are more often seen as part of the strategy in series such as Formula One (see Renault).  In those cases though, teams have a clear number one driver.  In this case, one would think that Hornaday is the number one driver for KHI.  Apparently Harvick doesn’t see things that way.

What really shocks me about this whole situation though, is that Harvick really thought Hornaday should pull over for him.  But if you know anything about Hornaday, you know that isn’t going to happen.  This is a guy that has built his career on rootin’ and gougin’ his way to the front.  He would just as soon wreck you as let you pass.  He came up on the short tracks of the west and isn’t the most successful Truck Series driver ever for nothing.  And Harvick, who followed a very similar path, should understand that better then anyone.

I’m sure the weekend recap meeting at KHI this week was probably an interesting affair.  Hopefully though Harvick realized his error in judgement and apologized to Hornaday.  But if he didn’t, and I was Ron Hornaday, I would politely (or not so politely) tell my boss to go pound sand.