NASCAR will be treating us to another one of its high quality tail gate parties Friday night when its Camping World Truck Series races in an arena where they absolutely shine: short tracks. Specifically we’re talking about the Indiana based O’Reilly Raceway Park. The AAA Insurance 200, presented by J D Byrider, is expected to be packed with action from the front row to the back row and will be well worth your viewing time on a Friday night. The series’ schedule tells us that we’re in store for even more short track entertainment. Three of the next five events are going to be held on tracks one mile in length or less.
PRE RACE NOTES OF INTEREST
All eyes will be on Ron Hornaday Jr Friday night as he attempts to carve another niche in series’ history by winning four consecutive races. The three time series champion, with 43 career wins, has a better than good chance of making that historic moment happen. That’s because he has some extremely impressive stats compiled during four previous appearances at ORP. From those four starts he has an average finish ratio of 2.3, a driver rating of 130.5 and he has completed all but three of the 801 laps he has ran there.
Hornaday, and Kevin Harvick Inc, will also be looking to pad their lead in the series’ championship points standings. Due to his three consecutive wins Hornaday has now turned an extremely close title battle into a 95 point lead over second place Matt Crafton.
Hornaday is going to have plenty of company when it gets down to leading the pack to the checkers at ORP. One of those sources will likely be his long time off track friend and on track rival Mike Skinner. Skinner, another series champion, also excels on short tracks. In fact, Hornaday and Skinner together have a combined 37 wins on short tracks where the truck series has visited. Also a reminder that, at last Saturday’s race at the Kentucky Speedway, it was Hornaday and Skinner who provided the late race drama with their one-two finish.
However everyone in the field for Friday night’s race will have be on the look out for Kyle Busch in his Ballew Motorsports Toyota. After a brief absence from the series due to a skin tight racing schedule, the “rowdy one” is expected to make his presence known in the Camping World Truck Series race Friday night. The always busy Busch will be doing triple duty this weekend. In addition to the truck race, he will be running in the Nationwide Series at ORP Saturday night and then the Sprint Cup event at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon. He will again be logging a lot of travel miles in order to accommodate the schedule demands from both speedways.
THE RACE BREAKDOWN
The AAA Insurance 200, presented by J D Byrider, is 200 laps/137.2 miles around a tightly wound .686 of a mile oval.
The race has 33 entries, for a 36 truck starting field, meaning every team is guaranteed a start in the race.
Despite the tightly wound nature of this race track, it is wide enough for the trucks to fan out two and three wide but only for a short amount of distance. That will provide another exciting element to this race all night long.
Pit road at ORP is also going to be a major challenge for the teams. This is especially true with the series pit stop rule implemented at the start of the season that says the teams can either change tires of put in fuel but they can’t do both on the same stop. That’s going to mean an extra run down a skin tight pit road.
The Raybestos Brakes Rookie Of The Year battle still continues to be tight.. Young Tayler Malsam, driving for Randy Moss Motorsports, leads those standings with 129 points. The considerably older, but still a series rookie, Johnny Sauter from Curb Motorsports is only three points behind Malsam.
Due to Ron Hornaday Jr’s recent three race win streak the manufacturer’s championship race is also tight. Toyota continues to lead the standings with 90 points but now only has a five point lead over Chevrolet. Ford goes into Friday night’s race with 52 points followed by Dodge at 37.
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