By Jared Turner
Special to the Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
Ken Schrader says his days in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series are over.
As for the Camping World Truck Series, there could be plenty more on the horizon.
Schrader, running a part-time truck schedule in 2010, is enjoying the ride in the No. 2 Chevrolet owned by Kevin and DeLana Harvick.
In fact, Schrader, a veteran of 732 Cup starts, is so charged up about his trucking duties, he’d actually consider a full season in NASCAR’s No. 3 series if the opportunity were right.
Of course, one hurdle to that might be finding the time.
Despite not having made a Cup start in almost two years, Schrader, 55, hasn’t forgotten his passion for speed.
Schrader races—sometimes as often as five or six nights a week—at dirt tracks throughout the country.
Long known for his willingness to drive anything with four wheels, Schrader clearly hasn’t changed.
“If I had the opportunity to run the full truck series (season), I’d jump on it in a heartbeat,” he said. “I know I’m going to race, and I know I’m going to race a bunch. I just don’t know where. “
Just last week, Schrader drove his dirt-track car in Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.
“Kenny’s like the consummate professional. He races two, three nights a week,” said Butch Hylton, crew chief on the No. 2 Kevin Harvick Inc. truck. “We always laugh because we look at his calendar when we’re trying to get everything scheduled and he’s like, ‘I don’t know. I’m in Macon, Ill., this weekend or I’m in Canada this weekend.’ He just races a lot. So when he comes, he can get in the truck and he can make a few laps and he can go, ‘OK, this is what I need.’ “
Schrader says he has raced his dirt car 52 times this year and won 12 races.
“We’ve been winning a bunch,” said Schrader, who has four wins in the Cup series. “It’s just not on TV and not in front of 100,000 people.”
The next order of business for Schrader is Saturday’s truck race at Nashville Superspeedway, a 1.33-mile concrete oval in Lebanon, Tenn.
Schrader has finishes of 28th, ninth, fifth and fourth in his truck outings this year. The truck he’ll drive in the Nashville 200 is the same one that went to victory lane last weekend at Pocono Raceway with Elliott Sadler.
Could Schrader be next?
“It’d be pretty cool. That’d really be neat,” said Schrader, who scored a truck win the series’ inaugural season in 1995 but hasn’t won in 92 starts since. “We won one Truck race back in 19-0-something when the truck series initially started, but to able to win one right now, which we can in Kevin’s and DeLana’s equipment—we can definitely win one—that would be pretty cool, especially with no more of them than we run right now.”
After Nashville, Schrader will start races at Darlington, Las Vegas and Talladega.
“I haven’t been doing that much pavement racing this year so it took a little bit to get back in the hang of it, but working with Butch Hylton and everyone over at that team, that made it real easy,” he said. “I’m looking at four more races in it, and I’m really looking forward to those.”