Craftsman Truck Series hits 200 at Memphis

It's very fitting that the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series hits its 200th race on Saturday at Memphis Motorsports Park, with the O'Reilly 200.

The series for racing pick-up trucks was born in 1995 and revolved around a schedule that primarily was short tracks, where rooting and gouging for position was an industry standard.

The trademark phrase, "Tough Trucks" came out of those beginnings, and Saturday's race on the .750-mile, banked oval (SPEED Channel, MRN Radio 3 p.m. ET) should continue the tradition.

"The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do," NASCAR president Mike Helton said. "That is, create an exciting brand of competition for NASCAR's tracks, fans and sponsor family, including Craftsman, which has been a partner with the series since its very first race.

"The series has been an important proving ground for our future stars such as Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick and others now competing on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series and NASCAR Busch Series."

Every past champion has competed on one of NASCAR's two top national series in 2003: Biffle, Jack Sprague and Mike Skinner in Winston Cup and Mike Bliss and Ron Hornaday Jr. in the Busch Series.

Ultra Motorsports owners Jim and Marlene Smith have competed in every event since the series was founded, and have won at least one race in all nine seasons.

Smith, who fields trucks for drivers Ted Musgrave and Jason Leffler, hopes the latter, in particular can continue the momentum he might have after winning the Bud Pole for last year's Memphis event -- as well as winning his first career truck race two events ago at Dover, Del.

	Bobby Hamilton is the series points leader. Credit: Autostock

Memphis proved to be a tonic for Leffler last year. He captured the pole and finished fourth in the event, starting a streak of strong runs that propelled him to a fourth-place finish in the 2002 Truck Series standings.

"I like Memphis because it is a place where the driver really makes a difference," Leffler said. "The corners here are really tight, so getting the right amount of forward bite is important, especially if you get into a long run.

"The front straightaway is kinked a little so you can arc the truck out to get through Turns 1 and 2, but Turns 3 and 4 are really tight. There's also a bump in the track right before the entrance to Turn 3, so that gives Memphis a little character as well."

Among the 40 teams entered for the series' eighth round are several that are looking at changes. Bobby Hamilton swapped the crew chiefs on his second and third tracks, with Randy Seals moving to Bill Lester's No. 8 Dodge Motorsports Ram and Danny Rollins switching to Chad Chaffin's Dickies Dodge.

"I made some changes around our shop last week that I think is going to be better for our organization," Hamilton said. "At the beginning of the year, we put guys together that we thought would click and after going through several races we looked at who might click better with each other."

Hamilton, however, stood pat at his No. 4 Square D Dodge with crew chief Newt Moore and with good reason. Hamilton is the only driver to lead a lap in all seven races this season, and he maintains a 73-point lead over veteran Rick Crawford coming into the event.

"I think we have a lot of things to be happy about right now," Hamilton said. "We have completed and led laps in every race. Since Daytona, we have not put a single scratch on our trucks.

"Yes, I think there is room for improvement, but there always is unless you are winning every weekend. We should just focus on the positive (so) for now we will just take the good and try to avoid the bad as best as we can."

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Among the other changes on display is Billy Ballew Motorsports' change from Ford -- which it has run since it joined the series in 1996 -- to Dodge on Rich Bickle's No. 15 Vokal truck. Bickle had his season-best finish last year at Memphis when he finished sixth.

"We are doing everything possible to make this team as competitive as we can," Ballew said. "We just want to see for ourselves what advantages or disadvantages there are with the Dodge Ram.

"NASCAR does a great job of leveling the playing field for all makes, but in this particular instance we wanted the take things into our own hands and the best way to do that was to build a Dodge and see what we could do."