Key hopeful of Nationwide test, race at Richmond

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- For the first time in nearly 10 years, Key Motorsports is returning to NASCAR's No. 2 series, with former champion Jeff Green.

Team owner Curtis W. Key Sr. and his race team will unveil one of its four Chevrolet Monte Carlo racecars during the series' scheduled open test session at Richmond International Raceway on Monday and Tuesday. The game plan is to enter the scheduled Nationwide Series event at RIR on May 2 -- one of a handful of races Key plans to race in the series in 2008.

Green

Veteran driver Green has been hired by Key to drive the car. Green was the 2000 Busch Series champion who also finished in the runner-up position in the series' championship battle in 1999 and 2001. Green has earned 16 career series victories and 87 top-five finishes in 254 career starts.

The last race in this series in which a Key Motorsports car ran was ironically at RIR when American Speed Association Late Model champion Kevin Cywinski qualified 19th and finished 25th in a Ford in September 1998. It was the 35th and last start for a Key Motorsports car in this division, a program that spanned parts of six seasons and came just a few months before Key was forced to shut down his race business in 1999.

Key, who returned to the NASCAR ranks in 2003 and has been a full-time competitor in the Craftsman Truck Series since 2006, purchased the four intermediate cars from the inventory that remained after the merger of Ginn Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc. last year. Three of four cars were driven for a few races in 2007 by Regan Smith while the fourth has never been on a racetrack.

Returning to the Nationwide Series is something that Key had been hoping to do for a long time.

"I really loved the Busch Series when I first got into the business of NASCAR team ownership, but a lot of things happened along the way that forced me to leave the sport in 1999 and return to Chesapeake [his Virginia home] to concentrate on my business [Curtis Key Plumbing Contractors] and my family," Key said. "I did learn a lot while I was down here [Mooresville, where he based his team for four of those first six seasons], and one of them was that you needed a pocket full of money if you were going to be able to compete against the big teams.

"I was able to increase my plumbing business considerably over a three-and-a-half-year period and that is when I decided to get back into racing and opened the Truck team. But I am thrilled to once again be able to race the cars."

Managing the Nationwide Series project for Key will be highly experienced Tommy Morgan, the director of competition at Key Motorsports. Morgan was the crew chief at Roush Racing in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Jeff Burton was dominating the series in the No. 9 Ford. Key Motorsports' existing Craftsman Truck Series crew chief, Gary Showalter, will remain at that level.

"We're going to give it our best shot for a few races and see what happens," Key said. "The cars all have been to the wind tunnel and posted some pretty good numbers, and when Regan drove them in competition last year, they performed quite well. I'm really curious to see how well we can do with them, but Richmond is my home and favorite racetrack and I want to make the race and compete.

"I will hire a driver that we know will race hard and get everything he can get out of the car."

Key has not indicated what other races he plans to enter with his Nationwide Series cars this season but will have a better idea after the test and race at Richmond.

Some of the series' most talented drivers had driven for Key during that initial, six-year stint headed by former series champions Tommy Ellis, Chuck Bown and Larry Pearson. Burton also drove one race for Key at Lowe's Motor Speedway in 1996 where he qualified seventh and was running up front when the motor sprung an oil leak.

The best career finish in his team's 35 previous series races was a fifth by Ellis in 1993 at Hickory Motor Speedway and a ninth-place finish in Charlotte with Bown behind the wheel in 1995. All of Key's racecars then were Fords.

The new Key Motorsports Chevrolet racecar will be unsponsored for its debut at Richmond.