NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series
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TRUCKS: KBM Shoes Looking For No. 1
Tayler Malsam and Brian Ickler are two of the sport’s rising stars...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted April 28, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Tayler Malsam (Left), Brian Ickler (Center) and Rick Ren (Right) from Kyle Busch Motorsports. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Kyle Busch’s two young lions will get to roar again on their boss’s 25th birthday.

Tayler Malsam, 21, and Brian Ickler, 24, the two young proteges of first-year NASCAR Camping World Truck Series owner Busch, will each be looking for his first series victory at Kansas Speedway on Sunday, the day that just happens to be Busch’s birthday. And they just might be able to deliver.

So far, Malsam is ninth in the Truck Series owner points, while Ickler and Busch have split time in the seat of the No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota Tundra, which is currently third in series owner points, an impressive position to be in with four races in the books.

Already, three drivers have scored their first career Truck Series victories at the 1.5-mile oval, and Malsam and Ickler would like to join them.

“We definitely have the equipment and the personnel to make it happen,” said Ickler, who drove from 32nd all the way to third at Martinsville in his only prior start of the 2010 season. “I’m looking forward to going back to a racetrack that I’ve run at before in both the trucks and the ARCA car. I’m looking at it as an advantage I didn’t have all of last year from the standpoint that I’ve seen the racetrack and turned laps there.”

Ickler fared well in this race last year, where in the first Truck Series event of his career, he qualified ninth and finished fifth. “It was my first time in the trucks,” said Ickler, a San Diego native. “I learned a ton, not only about the trucks, but about the racetrack. We spent a couple of days there due to the rain. It gave me a lot of time to spend on pit road and talk to people and get some coaching. I learned a lot about Kansas itself, and a lot about the Truck Series. I’ve learned a lot since then, too.”

For Malsam, the 2010 season has been a model of consistency. In four races so far this year, the Seattle native has finished no better than 13th in any race, and no worse than 17th.

“It’ll be a lot of fun,” Malsam said of Sunday’s truck race. “I know we have a really good truck that we are taking there, so I’m excited to see what happens.”

And given that the trucks have had the last three weekends off, Malsam is itching to go racing again.

“I don’t like these breaks. Coming from sprint cars, where we ran twice a week every week, I don’t like taking these long breaks,” he said. “I’m ready to get back out there and race and get a rhythm going.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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