DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Ron Hornaday has won two of the last three Truck series championships, but the Kevin Harvick Inc. driver will attempt to win the 2010 title without crew chief Rick Ren.
A little adversity shouldn’t faze a 51-year-old driver, who will now compete against Ren after Ren moved to Kyle Busch Motorsports as its competition director. Hornaday knows something about transition atop the pit box – the four-time champ won one of his series titles with three different crew chiefs.
So in comes veteran crew chief Dave Fuge to help guide Hornaday in 2010. Fuge is a former crew chief and team manager of Xpress Motorsports, which won series titles with Mike Bliss and Travis Kvapil. Hornaday and Fuge even go back farther in racing circles – Hornaday used to race against cars built by Fuge in California before Fuge entered Cup racing with Tri-Star Motorsports in 1989.
“When he started his truck team, he designed his own chassis, did his own bodies,” Hornaday said during the Preseason Thunder Fan Fest at Daytona International Speedway. “They’ve won two championships with two different drivers. I got an opportunity to drive his truck to help Mike Bliss win the championship down at Homestead and we ended up winning the race and Mike won the championship.
“Dave and I kind of go way back. We’ve never had a run-in, so that’s a plus. Rick Ren and I had a run-in before, and he became a great crew chief, too.”
Fuge will have the benefit that all of the KHI trucks are built the same, Hornaday said.
“Kevin knows what he wants on his trucks – he knows what he wants for a body, he knows what wind tunnel numbers he wants,” Hornaday said. “Our hands are tied. When we leave the shop, what it is is what we’ve got. We can change a spring here, and we can change a little bit of toe and stuff like that. It’s back to calling great races and driving as hard as we can [being] up to me and Dave.”
Hornaday said he had no hard feelings about Ren leaving for a more managerial job with a start-up team much closer to his home. Busch actually talked with Harvick about the mistakes Harvick made when starting up a team and asked for permission to talk to Ren, whose organizational skills and notes on the trucks are among the best in the business, Hornaday said.
“You know a good rookie when you see him on a race track, and Kyle is going to be a good rookie owner because he’s already asked questions,” Hornaday said. “He didn’t learn by mistakes. He came up to Kevin. We knew what was going on before Rick Ren did because Kyle asked if he could take Rick from him and stuff like that.
“I hope there isn’t any hard feelings of Rick leaving and vice versa, and I don’t think we’re going to miss a beat.”