Conservative racing brings Skinner more track success

It all started for Mike Skinner back in 1986, the year he made his Winston Cup debut for a small organization known as Zanworth Racing. He raced three races that season, making his debut at Martinsville. Skinner never finished on the lead lap, never finished higher than 22nd, yet a career was born.

Toyota

Mike Skinner

Driving safe

Mike Skinner was recently in Phoenix to help with the Toyota Driving Expectations. A program from Toyota for teens and their parents, educating them about driving and road safety through a unique combination of interactive hands-on sessions and simulated defensive driving exercises.

"I think any parent that gets the chance to take their teenager to do this and any teenager that gets the chance to take their parents to do this is definitely a worthwhile cause and a lot can come out of it," Skinner said.

"The kids and parents go through the same course and at the end of the day they talk again and it teaches the parents and kids alike how to focus and how to stay on the top of your game when you're behind the wheel of a car.

"Seeing the parents and the teens interact, I was pretty amazed, I've been impressed with it. It's a great cause and I honestly think it will definitely save lives."

• Toyota Driving Expectations

It took nine years for Skinner to finally earn that full-time ride in NASCAR, except it wasn't with the premier Cup Series, it was with NASCAR's new Truck Series in a vehicle funded by Richard Childress Racing.

That first season, Skinner won eight races, finished in the top 10 in 18 of the season's 20 events and won the inaugural championship. The following season left him with eight more wins and a third-place finish in the points standings behind champion Ron Hornaday.

Fast forward 13 years, seven relatively disappointing seasons in the Cup Series which saw some promising runs but no wins, and Skinner is back on top, battling for a championship against -- you guessed it, Hornaday.

Fourteen points is all that separates the two drivers with five races left in the '07 season, and while Skinner appreciates how exciting this points battle is with his long-time Truck Series nemesis, he would rather have his second title wrapped up by now.

"I'd just assume it not be a battle," Skinner said with a laugh. "I'd love to have about a 160-point lead like we had earlier in the season with five to go but instead we are down 14.

"Ronnie and I go back a long way, we're kinda like the sheep dog and the coyote ... when we go to work in the morning we're at each others throat and we're not really good friends. We're rivals and we do everything we can to beat the other one. But when the whistle blows and the race is over, you might find us out there in each other's motorcoach talking about it.

"If I can't have this [championship], if the 5 team can't have it this year, it's well deserved for Ronnie to have. He's been awfully lucky and very good."

Through 13 races this season, it looked like Skinner was in cruise control for his second Truck Series title. He just won his fourth race on the season at Kentucky, finished no worse than eighth, started on the pole seven times -- including a stretch of six in a row -- and had a 164-point lead in the points standings.

Interestingly, it was Skinner's 35th-place finish in last year's final race that led to his dominating '07 season.

"When we left Homestead last year after I crashed one of the best trucks I'd ever had in my whole career being a little impatient, I had to go home and I had to live with that all winter," Skinner said. "I hate points racing; I don't care nothing about points. I just want to go race and win races and run up front and have a good time in the twilight years of my career. That was my goal and that's the way it's been.

"After [Homestead], I said I owe it to this race team to give them a year or two of trying to just be conservative and taking top-10s when that's all we can get and top-fives and heck we won three of the first four races so I thought, gosh almighty this seems to work real good."

But there is a reason you don't crown champions at the midway point. Luck has as much to do with winning a title as driving, something not lost on Skinner. (Continued)