He is team manager now for Kevin Harvick Inc., but there was a time not long ago when Rick Carelli drove quite respectably himself in what is now the Camping World Truck Series.

Carelli, a native of Arvada, Colo., is a former NASCAR West regional series (now K&N Pro Series) champion who won four times in 134 career starts in the Truck Series and was a 2009 inductee of the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame. He retired as a driver in 2004, not too long after suffering a basal skull fracture and other serious injuries in an accident at Memphis Motorsports Park in 1999.

Carelli's career

Rick Carelli had a successful late-model, coast-to-coast racing career. He won 21 times in the NASCAR Southwest Tour, and was the 1991 series champion.

Carelli also won nine races in the NASCAR West regional series, and took home the 1993 championship.

Carelli has more than 1,000 career starts to his credit and nearly 450 victories in various levels of racing. His career in racing spans more than three decades as a driver, mechanic, spotter, consultant and executive.

“

I probably wouldn't do anything different than what I've done before to get here.

”

-- RICK CARELLI

In addition to serving as team manager at KHI, he also currently serves as the spotter for Ron Hornaday Jr., driver of the No. 33 Chevrolet and four-time champion in the Truck Series. Among other things, Carelli spoke with NASCAR.COM about watching Hornaday fly through the air in a spectacular -- and scary -- wreck at Talladega Superspeedway this past weekend.

Q: How did you get the cool nickname "High Plains Drifter," and why?

Carelli: Actually, that was laid on me by the late [auto-racing announcer] Larry Nuber years ago. I was doing some racing in ASA [American Speed Association] and traveling all around and it was one of those things where he just said, 'You always seem to come to all the big-money races and do well, so I'm gonna call you the High Plains Drifter.' ... It was one of those nicknames that kind of stuck with me, being from Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. I think we were all Clint Eastwood fans back then, and it's been with me ever since.

Q: Talk about back in the day when Mike Harvick, Kevin's father, was your crew chief?

Carelli: Mike and I raced together back in Bakersfield [Calif.] in 1985 and won a championship. So for 25 years now we've been friends.

Q: So I guess Kevin must have been about 10 years old at that time, running around while you're trying to race. What was that like?

Carelli: It was pretty cool, actually. I remember one of the first times I met Kevin. Obviously I drove out there and went to their house a couple of times. I remember one time when Kevin and his dad and his grandfather drove to watch me run modifieds at Lakeside [Amusement Park in Lakeside, Colo.]. A big thunderstorm came up and the race got rained out, so we went and ate some Italian food. I think they were coming from running a go-kart race with Kevin. So the race got rained out that night, but I guess a friendship started being formed. So I've known Kevin about the same amount of years I've known Mike.

Q: Was Kevin's behavior acceptable at that dinner? Did he have good table manners and everything?

Carelli: Ah, you see how Kevin behaves. But hey, at the time even though he was a young kid, you could see he was paying attention to what was going on. He was a normal 10-year-old kid -- but he had the same drive and the same fire that you see today.

Q: Could you have imagined then that he would go on to experience such great success, and that you would someday be working for him like you are now?

Carelli: At the time, you never know what paths you'll cross and what doors will open and close. But when you saw him go out with his father and you saw how hard-nosed he was when they would go run go-karts together and stuff like that, you thought he might go places. He learned how to work on cars, he learned how to race 'em, he learned how to take care of 'em. So he had a good path to learn how to go race, whether it was in go-karts or later on in cars.

Q: Do you personally miss driving?

Carelli: It's one of those deals where I ran for a lot of years and had a lot of success in it. I had a lot of fun. I was looking around the garage in Talladega and thinking about this -- but this is one of these sports where once you get involved in it, you're a young man but pretty soon you realize you're growing old. The thing is you're growing old with the same people. You look around the garage and the pits and you can see how much it's changed over the years, but you still see a lot of the same people. I probably wouldn't do anything different than what I've done before to get here. It's one of those things where once you get to July, the year flies by so fast and next thing you know it's December. These last three races [of this season] are just going to blow by us.

Q: Do you enjoy working as a spotter for Hornaday?

Carelli: I've been down here at Kevin's for about five years now, and have spotted for Hornaday. I just have a lot of respect for Ron from when we were great competitors against each other for a lot of years. Getting up there spotting for him, you're still a part of it. You see a lot of things on the race track that you're used to seeing when you're inside the cockpit. You can see out in front of him and see maybe if someone's changing their line. When I drove, the biggest information I always wanted was I wanted to know what was ahead of me, what was behind me, and whether someone was coming or not coming. I think we just have a good respect for each other, so it works out well.

Q: How unnerving was it watching him fly through the air during the wreck at Talladega last weekend?

Carelli: It was disappointing to wreck because we had such a great truck. Everyone here at KHI went to work on our superspeedway program and we picked up 1.2 seconds over what we ran last year at Talladega. The 33 truck and the 2 truck [of KHI] were fast trucks. We sat on the pole with the 33 and the 2 got up there and led the race with [Ken] Schrader in it. I think we really had an opportunity to get up there.

Todd Bodine and Ron were working together and Todd was pushing him really well. Unfortunately, you've got some guys who race all day out there on the race track and then at the end they just get a little overanxious and hit somebody when they're out there drafting. Somebody made a mistake and hit Todd, turning him sideways; Todd got into [Mike] Skinner, and Skinner turned sideways and got into Ron. Next thing we knew, she was flyin'. I guess you can always look at it and say if you can get out of it afterward and walk away, it's OK. But it was unfortunate.

Q: You had a bad wreck in a truck in Memphis in 1999. How much safer are the trucks now than they were then?

Carelli: To tell you the truth, when you have a wreck like what I had at Memphis in '99, it changes your whole perspective. You realize you're not invincible. But the safety on the trucks has come a long way -- with the HANS device, the seats, the foam walls. Nobody is really asleep on this issue; we're working all the time to get better. Every time we put somebody in that seat, we want to make sure he can walk away. It's a testament to everybody in the sport, really -- but nobody is laying down and saying the job is done and we can't still do more.

You see what happened to Ron and how the truck flew through the air and he got out and walked away after it rolled back over. We got the truck back to the shop and looked it over and it did its job. It bent some of the cage around -- but when you fly through the air at 180 miles per hour and hit upside down on the ground, something's going to happen.

Video:
• Hornaday flips in the Big One at Talladega