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NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series
TRUCKS: Mike Skinner Driver Diary
A lot has been said about this season and the way my partnership with Randy Moss Motorsports came about...
Mike Skinner  | http://www.randymossmotorsports.com  |  Posted December 09, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Randy Moss Motorsports driver and 1995 NASCAR Camping World Series champion Mike Skinner scored three wins in 2009. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
“Something To Build On”

A lot has been said about this season and the way my partnership with Randy Moss Motorsports came about. While I’m more interested at this point in looking toward the future and concentrating on what I think this team is capable of in 2010, it’s important to remember just what a huge team effort it was just to get 2009 off the ground.

2009 was a really strange year. We finished up the 2008 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season with a sixth-place effort at Bill Davis Racing and that team was busy preparing for a run at the championship in 2009. On New Year’s Eve we celebrated what we thought was a successful season and looked forward to continued success at BDR. Then the bottom dropped out and by the next day, our whole world had changed. I didn’t have a sponsor or a job just that quick.

Luckily, I was able to get together with David Dollar and Randy Moss and they decided to take a leap of faith, as did longtime sponsor Exide. We decided to try to go racing and make the best of the season. We were already so far behind that I didn’t have very big expectations. I was hoping to be able to finish in the top 10 in the points and just go out every week and look competitive. The team – me included – needed to re-establish ourselves, especially since Randy Moss Motorsports, which had previously run as Morgan-Dollar Motorsports, hadn’t really run all that well in a while. So, like I said, I wasn’t expecting much, but that all changed when we got to Daytona.

Eric Philips and the crew showed up for that first race of the season with a beautiful Toyota Tundra and I was very, very impressed. They really worked their tails off and did a really good job making the initial switch from the Chevrolets they had run for so long to Toyota. They burned the midnight oil and put in a helluva effort in a very short time. I was impressed with their dedication and their drive. The next thing you know, not long into the season, we won a race and the season just turned into one of those years where I thought to myself,

‘My gosh, we’re so much better than I had expected.’ All told, we ended up winning three races and a bunch of poles and finished in the top three in points. We didn’t have a lot of money and these guys did it on less than half the budget it usually takes to do it. I’m just really, really excited about the way it ended up.

I think the highlight of the season was winning at Kansas Speedway. By the time we ran that race, there were already two races we thought we really should have won, so that made us think that maybe we really could win some races this year because at that point I wasn’t really sure whether we could or not. The circumstances had to be exactly right. The pit stops had to go well, the cautions had to be perfectly timed and the moon and stars had to line up just right because we weren’t strong enough to go out every week and dominate as I was used to.

At BDR there were a couple of years there where we ran pretty strong. You get used to that. When you become accustomed to steak every night; you don’t want to eat a hot dog, you know? But then we won and it was a big high point because that race went on for three days because of weather. We started that race with about a fourth-place truck and we thought, ‘Hey that’s pretty good, we can finish in the top five.’ Then Eric made the right calls and the right adjustments to our Tundra and the racetrack changed just enough that we had the best truck when the checkered flag dropped. It wouldn’t have mattered if the race went for three more days, we were going to win and we did. We were especially proud because we didn’t win by backing into it; we won because we had the best truck, which was a big deal for us.

Things got even better from there and there were times I thought we might actually be able to finish in the top two in the points battle. We ran into some trouble there near the end of the year, but all in all, it was far more successful than anybody ever really thought it would be and that makes next season even more exciting. Eric and I have a year together under our belts and there are some exciting things happening at Randy Moss Motorsports as a whole. Stay tuned…
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Mike Skinner

Randy Moss Motorsports

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