 | | Jimmy Spencer has one Craftsman Truck Series victory. Credit: Autostock |
By Mark Spoor, NASCAR.COM
June 9, 2005
02:26 PM EDT (18:26 GMT)
Even though Jimmy Spencer has 14 Craftsman Truck Series starts under his belt, the outspoken veteran driver nicknamed "Mr. Excitement" insists that he's still learning how to race in the series. "I'm [used] to these 500-mile races (in the Nextel Cup Series) and I'm [used to the fact] that you can make a lot of adjustments and some of the adjustments that we've made over this year has not been aggressive enough to fix the truck. "So, I think those are things that we're learning as a team that we say 'listen, man,' me especially, 'hey, man, this truck's too free or this truck's too tight, so let's do this.' So there is a different mentality because of the shorter distance, but I do like it." Since winning in his first Craftsman Truck Series start, Spencer success in the Truck Series has been a bit more modest. In the 13 starts since that win, Spencer has two top-five and five top-10 finishes. Spencer contends that the series is a lot different than it was two years ago. "I think that's what's happening right now the Truck Series is a lot harder," said Spencer. "Used to be six, eight trucks, 10 trucks could win; there's probably about 15-18 trucks that have a legitimate shot at winning races now so it is a lot tougher than it's ever been and it's gonna get tougher as the years progress." Spencer and the rest of the Truck Series head to Texas Motor Speedway this weekend for the Chex 400, the first of two races this season at TMS. "The neat thing about Texas [is] you can pass in the trucks," Spencer said. "You can use there's a little bit of draft, but most of all you can use the high groove like (four-time NCTS Texas winner) Brendan Gaughan has used in the past or you can run the bottom. "Teddy Musgrave likes the bottom really well. And it seems like...it's always a good race at Texas from the standpoint that you can run through there wide open. And there's nothing neater than running a race track wide open in a truck." Spencer enters the weekend fifth in the Craftsman Truck Series standings with four top-10 finishes. Spencer is coming off a disappointing weekend at Dover where he qualified 29th and finished a dismal 24th. "I think that we have to step up our program as far as attention to detail and I think that the reason why that is is because of the competition level," Spencer said. "I won't tell ya that we haven't taken anything for granted because I think we have taken some things for granted." | 
