Hornaday gets golden truck victory

On Saturday, Dillon was Hornaday’s chief rival and was closing on him as the laps wound down.

“It will mean a lot when I sit on the front porch in the rocking chair with my grandkids and I can tell them that I won 50 races,” Hornaday said. “Austin is an up-and-coming star and at age 53, I beat him.”

Dillon said Hornaday, who will be looking for a new ride at the end of this season when his Kevin Harvick Inc. team will shut down, still has some gas in his tank.

“The old man whipped my tail,” Dillon said. “I gave it everything I had on those last laps.”

Hornaday’s been hanging in there with young drivers since the truck series started. He won the pole for the circuit’s first race at Phoenix at age 37 and went on to win six races that year. The next season he won four times and took the first of his four series championships.

He ran trucks through the 1999 season, winning 26 races and two titles, before his team owner, Dale Earnhardt, moved him to the series now known as Nationwide. He won twice and finished fifth in points in 2000. He later won two races driving for Richard Childress, one each in 2003 and 2004, but he was 46 years old and many thought his career was coming to a close.

Then along came fellow Californian Harvick, who hired Hornaday to drive for his then-fledgling truck team.

Hornaday showed that he was far from over the hill as he went on to win two more championships and 24 victories and counting.

Hornaday said in a recent interview with SPEED TV that his career isn’t the only thing that Harvick saved for him. Back in 2008, Hornaday’s health was declining and it was Harvick who stayed after him to get appropriate medical care, something many race drivers tend to put off.

"He's definitely helped my career out by not only giving me good equipment but it goes back to my thyroid deal," Hornaday said. "I went to every doctor I've ever known and finally got up there with Kevin and he called his doctor up and got [friend and fellow Harvick employee] Rick Carelli to take me down there and they found Graves' disease.

"We were going to put [treatment] off until the end of the season. The doc says, 'You can't put it off more than a month because you won't be here.' So I owe my life to Kevin and DeLana [Harvick] and Rick Carelli. Everything has been good ever since with my health and I owe to them that, too. A lot of people don't know that."

Kevin Harvick recently told reporters that his driver has done things in the truck series that have earned him a spot among NASCAR’s all-time great drivers.

“Ron has been the heart and soul of the truck series,” he said. “Fifty wins is just one more incredible achievement in a career that I’m sure will one day land him in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.”

Notes

Among the bigger stories when the Sprint Cup Series moved to Dover International Speedway last week were whether Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus had hit a rockier-than-usual spot in their relationship and whether the five-time champions were out of the running for a sixth straight title.

Johnson and Knaus put those questions to rest with a strong second-place run at Dover, one that saw the two as courteous as could be on the radio during the race, something they didn’t do the week before at New Hampshire.

Johnson, in his regular press conference on Friday before the AAA 400 at Dover, said the terse words between him and Knaus were nothing new. Johnson told Knaus at New Hampshire that Knaus’ comments, which were meant to be motivational, were annoying him instead.

“When you work with someone as long as we have, for over 10 years now, there are hot spots and buttons that can be pushed that send someone over the edge,” he said. “We know what took place last weekend and [Knaus] knows at times I can be frustrated with his cheerleading. That is what I said on the radio. So, it’s nothing new to us. ...

“It wasn’t our finest moment [at New Hampshire], but it is what we deal with. It’s been part of what we’ve been dealing with for 10 years.”