By Tom Kreager • GANNETT TENNESSEE •
August 3, 2010
Ron Hornaday Jr. will come to Nashville
Superspeedway this weekend with his boss’ truck
and the goal of bringing home another Les Paul
Gibson Guitar.
A win at the Gladeville track is exactly what
Hornaday — last year’s Camping World Truck Series
champion — needs if he wants to get back in the
series points race. He enters Saturday night’s
Nashville 200 in seventh — 268 points behind
series leader Todd Bodine.
The race is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
“If we can knock off 40 points here and 20 points
there, we can get back into it,” Hornaday said. “I am
not really going to worry about points until the last
five races. All we can do is keep doing what we’re
doing.
“But we don’t have any more mulligans.”
Nashville might be a good place to help Hornaday
cut into Bodine’s lead. Hornaday has finished in the
top five in his past four races at Nashville. He led
115 of 154 laps last year en route to his first win at
the Superspeedway.
For the first time since the Gladeville track opened,
the August race will be the second NASCAR truck
race this season. Hornaday said in April his team
struggled with tire issues before figuring things out
prior to practice concluding.
“We got a grasp on it at the end of practice,”
Hornaday said. “We’re looking forward to coming
back.”
Hornaday said he will drive the truck that team
owner Kevin Harvick used to finish second at
Nashville in April. Hornaday finished third that race.
“We’ll just see what we’ve got there,” Hornaday said.
Hornaday said his KHI team will be able to apply
data learned from the earlier race at Nashville
despite what will be a drastic change in
temperatures.
“That’s the good thing about racing on a concrete
track,” he said.
This season has been an up-and-down one for the
defending series champion.
He was involved in an accident at Daytona to open
the season and finished 27th out of 36 trucks. He
blew a tire at Atlanta in the series’ second race of
the season and finished 34th. Last week he was
involved in a wreck at Pocono after starting eighth
and finished 29th, five laps down.
“The guys at the shop have never put their heads
down,” Hornaday said. “We can’t fix the problems
we’ve been having. We just have to keep working.”