Hornaday's father left life lessons as a family man

If you see Ron Hornaday Jr. this week, make sure you ask him about his dad -- but make sure you have a few minutes to spare. Ron might go on for a while.

Hornaday Jr. comes to Daytona for Speedweeks 2009 with quite a bit of a different perspective than all the previous years he's been here. You see, his dad -- a West Coast racing icon who was a fixture in a lot of Truck Series garages -- passed away right before Christmas.

Hornaday

"I've got a little bit of his ashes when I come down that I'm going to spread in the lake -- so don't be watching me because I don't think it's legal," Hornaday Jr. said. "He's raced with the best, raced from Ontario to Riverside with all the big boys as you call it, and he gave me a big path to go down.

"I was fortunate to have the father that I had and parents, because they kept me involved in racing. There's other things I should have done or could have done, and that phone call from Dale [Earnhardt] changed my life in '94."

Hornaday Jr. won NASCAR Southwest Tour championships in 1992 and 1993 and won three races and was second in Winston West points in '94. Then Earnhardt called him to drive his Truck Series entry. Typical for the Hornadays, it had a profound family impact, but also a positive one.

"They were probably the most proud," Hornaday Jr. said of his parents, who have both since passed. "They got up and moved their family themselves, moved back to North Carolina. It was pretty cool. I was the youngest of six of us and to see them following me around in racing, that was pretty cool."

So when you see Hornaday Jr. at a racetrack, what do you think you see? For sure, an intense racer, a committed teammate, and I hope someone who's immensely enjoying what he's doing -- because he's all that, but so much more.

Darn it, you can't be everywhere at once, or go back in time. But when you see that and you know that Hornaday Jr. is the proverbial chip off the old block, it makes you wish you could have seen the old man when he was winning all those late model races and Winston West championships on the left coast. (Continued)