Conversation: 2007 NCTS champion Ron Hornaday (cont'd)

Q: What was the highlight of the season for you, other than those last few laps -- and then after the checkered flag, at Homestead?

Hornaday: Doing the burnout into Victory Lane at Lowe's was cool. That actually started at Kentucky [in 2006] when the ground was wet and it slipped and started spinning, so I just kept it going; and it started there. I actually got in trouble at Lowe's doing that burnout.

Three-time champ

Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday and team owners Kevin and DeLana Harvick celebrated a historic moment at the this year's banquet.

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But I cannot pinpoint one race -- maybe Loudon [N.H.], to have a dominant truck like we had. But every week when we unloaded, we had a truck to win with. It might not have been the fastest truck, but it was definitely the most comfortable truck and the fastest truck on long runs, and that's all we worked on.

To have that, 25 weeks out of the year, is something special.

Q: Compare the three Truck Series championships, if you could?

Hornaday: When we were sitting in Victory Lane [at Homestead], celebrating and all that; and everything got nice and quiet and Kevin yelled at the guys and said, "You guys make sure you leave that truck exactly as it is -- that's mine for the barn."

You don't know how special that was to me, because Kevin and DeLana are going to own race teams for a long time -- and I'll probably quit driving and I may be washing windows there at Kevin Harvick Incorporated, but [that truck will be there].

When I took some friends, a month or a month-and-a-half ago to DEI, and they were moving their stuff over to Ginn; but to walk through there and to still have access like I have -- to go through the back rooms and all that stuff -- and to still see my truck that I won the championship for Dale Earnhardt in 1996 -- his very first championship -- is something special.

Now, 20 years from now I can take my grandkids up to Kevin Harvick Incorporated and show them the championship truck that I drove -- and that's something special to me, right there.

Q: You've owned racecars and run your own race team; so how impressed are you with what Kevin and DeLana have put together up in Kernersville, N.C.?

Hornaday: I don't think anybody in this whole racing organization, racing environment -- could do what he's done; in racing all three series in one weekend; building the team; all the press and all the stuff he's got to do, week in and week out; and to still look as good as he does and to still love racing as much as he does, is unbelievable.

So I'm so impressed to see how much he likes his equipment, the way his people look at the shop and how he treats them like family. He's grown up a lot. I've raced with him before, when he was "The Kid" and I was in my prime -- I don't know what I was, 30, or something like that, 35.

His dad and him always put nice racecars together and stuff like that, so when they [Kevin and DeLana] asked me to drive for them, I didn't even hesitate -- he didn't have to tell me how much money, or anything.

So this is something special, to see what they've built in a short amount of time. The banner is going to be pretty big. Our shop -- Kevin's shop has pretty tall ceilings and everybody that's won a race, he's been putting banners up; so he's got Tony Stewart's and Kevin Harvick's and some of mine up there.

Now, this championship banner, just to make the shop look so fulfilled; and to be the first one to put a championship banner up there for Kevin and DeLana is something special.

Q: Speaking of special, as you look to the 2008 season -- and as you look back on your Craftsman Truck Series career -- could you ever imagine you and Jack Sprague as teammates?

Hornaday: I was hoping that I pushed for that. Jack was asking me about it, and that he had heard about [Kevin and DeLana running] a second truck; and he wanted me to talk to Kevin. He said, 'Tell him I'm really not looking, but I don't know what's going on over here [at Wyler Racing.'] So I asked Jack if he wanted me to ask Kevin if he wanted a job, or not?

Kevin and I talked, and he had looked at some other drivers, but he didn't know how really good friends Jack and I were. Jack's kinda got a driving style like mine: He likes to drive it in deep, the thing's got to rotate and then you can get on the gas hard.

The trucks nowadays have changed a little bit, just with the downforce and how fast you get to the corners. So with Jack Sprague coming over -- I'll go back a little bit, to when Kevin put the second truck out there, and when him and Clint Bowyer started racing it.

That just helped our program with the No. 33 truck out, so that both trucks can leave the shop the same, and if they go a different direction at the track, it just picks up the speed on both so much quicker -- especially when Kevin drives it, because he can go back there and say 'here's what I'm feeling and here's what's wrong with the truck and here's what we need to change on these trucks.'

But with me saying that, it always costs money to do that, and I'm not the one to say that -- I'm just the one to let Rick Ren know that and he's the one to go back [to management]. But with Kevin driving, it just accelerates our program that much faster. (Continued)