With future secure, Roush teams set to race

Lately, it seems, the only folks making news in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series are the folks at Roush Racing. You'd think they were running for president or something.

	Carl Edwards

Well, not exactly, but one of their sponsors is.

So let's see if we've got all this right:

Jon Wood gets a sponsor before the Kansas race, Bob Graham for President.

Jon Wood wins the Kansas race. Carl Edwards finishes second.

Roush Racing would announce their NCTS intentions.

Jon Wood wins the pole at Kentucky.

Carl Edwards wins at Kentucky. Jon Wood finishes fourth.

Roush Racing announces it is staying in the series with Wood and Edwards.

NASCAR slaps a 100-point penalty and a $25,000 fine on Edwards' team for illegal cylinder heads.

Are there any other truck drivers out there?

"Like I said after our win Saturday night, our guys are amazing," Edwards said. "Our mechanics and crew members have weathered this storm unbelievably. They haven't gone off looking for other jobs. They stayed true to us and that's both the 99 and 50 teams.

:I think the largest benefactor of this decision is the guys. Now they can go home and know that we're going to be racing all year in the same capacity that we are right now."

That might be scary to the other NCTS competitors.

"This team is incredible," Wood said. "We are really on a roll right now. We should have had a second-place finish Saturday night at Kentucky so Roush would have had another one-two finish, but I got stuck behind a lapped truck on that last restart and lost a few positions.

"That was kind of disappointing, but a fourth-place finish is nothing to pout about."

Wood is seventh in the NCTS standings heading to this weekend's Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers Ram Tough 200 at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill. But he's only 93 points behind leader Travis Kvapil -- and closing fast.

"We're definitely in the championship hunt," Wood said. "We're 93 points out of the lead and about 50 out of second, so at the rate that we're closing -- I think we were 150 points out two races ago.

"We're definitely performing the way we need to. We got out to kind of a rocky start with two bad finishes to start the year, but the rest have basically been top-10 or better."

Edwards would have been right on Wood's rail, but the illegal cylinder heads cost him 100 points. He's still within reach, but Edwards is now 217 points out of the lead.

The teams claims the engine was a spare one that had been in the truck all season, and it was simply a "quality-control" issue. Edwards said the engine wasn't the reason why he won his first Craftsman Truck Series race last weekend.

"That infraction was not what won that race for us," Edwards said. "That win was due to the setup on the truck and going there and testing. That's what got us to Victory Lane, and that's what's going to get us there again."

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The penalty won't affect the way Edwards' team has performed lately, he said. In the last five races, Edwards has the victory at Kentucky, two second-place finishes, a fifth and a 15th.

"The guys are excited, and we know why we won that race," Edwards said. "Whatever comes out of it, it's not going to affect our morale at all. We know how hard we have to work and we're going to keep doing that. I don't think it's going be anything that bothers us."

Roush Racing's truck teams would be used to outside interference by now. Edwards' team sill doesn't have a full-time sponsor, while Wood's deal with Graham is two races old. Yet, they've both been able to perform under the find-a-sponsor-or-else pressure.

"The thing that makes me the happiest about the announcement is that now we can worry about racing instead of the politicking involved and all of the things that we as drivers should not have to worry about," Wood said.

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"Our performance lately has not been due to the fact that we haven't had a sponsor. It's because we have our stuff together. Now we can really focus on what we need to be doing and not worry about the sponsorship end of it at all.

"That was kinda frustrating because we had a lot of pieces that needed to fit in place before we could move forward with our plans for the remainder of the year. I think they wanted to keep us surprised just to build up more attention and it worked.

"It was frustrating at times because you'd hear the rumor mill at work and I don't know how some of them get started, but when you hear your name attached to a rumor it does catch your attention.

"Hearing the rumors and not knowing the true answer made it a little tough the past week, but I'm glad it's behind us, and they can start talking about someone else now."

Yeah, if Roush Racing will let them.