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Camping World Trucks
TRUCKS: Series Veteran Honed Stat-Keeping Skills Watching Beloved Cincinnati Reds
SPEED reporter Ray Dunlap go-to guy in the NASCAR garage for anything related to the Truck Series...
Ray Dunlap, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Reporter. (Photo: SPEED)
NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES VETERAN REPORTER HONED STAT-KEEPING SKILLS WATCHING BELOVED CINCINNATI REDS
LONGTIME MEMBER OF SPEED™ BROADCAST TEAM A WALKING ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SERIES STATS, VICTIM OF MANY JOKES
As the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series enjoys its final weekend off of the 2012 season, SPEED reporter Ray Dunlap is home in North Carolina doing stuff he knows will make him a punch line.
“Sometimes I hear, ‘I’m absolutely amazed you know that. That’s incredible,’ but more often it’s ‘You’re such a geek. Who knows that kind of stuff? Get a life,’” he related.
Dunlap is working on stats for the Oct. 27 Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway (2 p.m. ET live on SPEED; NCWTS Setup with Krista Voda at 1:30 p.m. ET), the first of the season’s final four races.
Dunlap has had to develop thick skin because of his obsession with stat-keeping, but the encyclopedic stats and history of the Truck Series he has compiled over the years are no laughing matter.
He is the undeniable go-to guy in the NASCAR garage for anything related to the Truck Series. After all, he has compiled multitudes of various files dating back to the series’ inaugural race in 1995. Research is part of the job description for any reporter, but the extremes to which Dunlap carries it border on the obsessive.
So, what is in that stack of papers Dunlap totes around like closely-guarded state secrets?
“I have probably 35 different files on the Truck Series I’ve created over the years and update on a weekly basis,” Dunlap explained. “A lot of it is random stuff most people wouldn’t know or care to keep track of, such as the number of wins for a particular truck number or truck chassis. Some of it is the number of second-place finishes a driver has had without a win or how many times two particular drivers have finished one and two to each other.”
Dunlap not only tracks stats, he crafts an extensive chart on white cardboard for every race, detailing any pertinent stats he can dig up on the teams and drivers he is covering that particular weekend.
The Ohio native says the stat-keeping process has fascinated him since he was a kid cheering on the Cincinnati Reds.
“I’ve been a stat guy since I was a child,” he recalled. “I grew up a big Cincinnati Reds fan and was always amazed by all the stats and info baseball had available. It was so much more than any other sport. I thought, ‘Who keeps track of this stuff? Who are these people?’ Then I became one of them. I knew the batting averages of all the players of the Big Red Machine and stupid stats no other kid would know. It’s a part of who I am.”
Dunlap didn’t cover the Truck Series in its earliest years, so he had to put in his due diligence researching and compiling stats dating back to 1995. Those most appreciative of his labor of love might be Truck Series teams in the market to learn at what tracks a particular truck chassis of theirs competed.
“I’ve kept extensive chassis history notes over the years, so teams call me all the time to ask where their chassis ran a couple of years ago,” Dunlap said. “Additionally, when Kevin Harvick Inc. closed late last year, I received seven or eight phone calls from different crew chiefs and drivers who wanted to buy one of the team’s trucks but first wanted to know where it raced and how it finished. That wasn’t the first time I’d gotten calls like that.”
Dunlap says he gets teased mercilessly about his research idiosyncrasies but he keeps it in perspective.
“I get made fun of a lot in the garage, but I can take it,” he said. “It’s a real privilege to be able to add something to our broadcast that the average person at home without access to the garage wouldn’t know. To have that info at your fingertips at the right moment, though, requires weekly research and updating.”
The same friends who make fun of Dunlap’s notes also find it amusing to hide them.
“Our SPEED crew and other folks in the garage steal or hide my notes whenever they need a good laugh,” Dunlap said. “One of their favorite times to do it is during our production meeting at the track. Everyone gets a kick out of that. But sometimes there are accidents, usually because I set them down before I go on-camera. Just a couple of months ago, I laid my files on a tire stack and the tire specialist rolled it away. I had to track everything down.”
“Occasionally we’ll help him ‘misplace’ those mountains of stats and watch him worry for a while,” SPEED play-by-play announcer Rick Allen joked. “In our defense, we always give them back. But we’re not studying them, we’re just hiding them. One of the funny things about Ray is he is still just a step behind in the electronic world and carries all his paper files covering 18 seasons everywhere he goes. You can imagine how big that bag is and how much fun it is to hide from him.”
So, the obvious question is why Dunlap hasn’t adapted to the 21st century and integrated his notes into the nifty little invention known as a laptop. After all, it’s not nearly as fun for your friends to hide your computer as it is your painstakingly-hand scripted notes.
“I have a horrible memory,” Dunlap explained. “If I don’t write it down, I can’t recall it. Handwriting it all onto the cardboard each weekend helps me because it makes the data fresher in my mind.”
That’s an effort everyone on the SPEED team appreciates.
“It would be a challenge to find a stat or fact about the Truck Series that Ray doesn’t already know,” said Krista Voda, host of NCWTS Setup. “He knows more than most teams do. I think we all take Ray for granted a bit because if we’re searching for something obscure, we don’t even have to Google it. We just ask Ray. But then again, so does everyone else in the garage.”
LONGTIME MEMBER OF SPEED™ BROADCAST TEAM A WALKING ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SERIES STATS, VICTIM OF MANY JOKES
As the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series enjoys its final weekend off of the 2012 season, SPEED reporter Ray Dunlap is home in North Carolina doing stuff he knows will make him a punch line.
“Sometimes I hear, ‘I’m absolutely amazed you know that. That’s incredible,’ but more often it’s ‘You’re such a geek. Who knows that kind of stuff? Get a life,’” he related.
Dunlap is working on stats for the Oct. 27 Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway (2 p.m. ET live on SPEED; NCWTS Setup with Krista Voda at 1:30 p.m. ET), the first of the season’s final four races.
Dunlap has had to develop thick skin because of his obsession with stat-keeping, but the encyclopedic stats and history of the Truck Series he has compiled over the years are no laughing matter.
He is the undeniable go-to guy in the NASCAR garage for anything related to the Truck Series. After all, he has compiled multitudes of various files dating back to the series’ inaugural race in 1995. Research is part of the job description for any reporter, but the extremes to which Dunlap carries it border on the obsessive.
So, what is in that stack of papers Dunlap totes around like closely-guarded state secrets?
“I have probably 35 different files on the Truck Series I’ve created over the years and update on a weekly basis,” Dunlap explained. “A lot of it is random stuff most people wouldn’t know or care to keep track of, such as the number of wins for a particular truck number or truck chassis. Some of it is the number of second-place finishes a driver has had without a win or how many times two particular drivers have finished one and two to each other.”
Dunlap not only tracks stats, he crafts an extensive chart on white cardboard for every race, detailing any pertinent stats he can dig up on the teams and drivers he is covering that particular weekend.
The Ohio native says the stat-keeping process has fascinated him since he was a kid cheering on the Cincinnati Reds.
“I’ve been a stat guy since I was a child,” he recalled. “I grew up a big Cincinnati Reds fan and was always amazed by all the stats and info baseball had available. It was so much more than any other sport. I thought, ‘Who keeps track of this stuff? Who are these people?’ Then I became one of them. I knew the batting averages of all the players of the Big Red Machine and stupid stats no other kid would know. It’s a part of who I am.”
Dunlap didn’t cover the Truck Series in its earliest years, so he had to put in his due diligence researching and compiling stats dating back to 1995. Those most appreciative of his labor of love might be Truck Series teams in the market to learn at what tracks a particular truck chassis of theirs competed.
“I’ve kept extensive chassis history notes over the years, so teams call me all the time to ask where their chassis ran a couple of years ago,” Dunlap said. “Additionally, when Kevin Harvick Inc. closed late last year, I received seven or eight phone calls from different crew chiefs and drivers who wanted to buy one of the team’s trucks but first wanted to know where it raced and how it finished. That wasn’t the first time I’d gotten calls like that.”
Dunlap says he gets teased mercilessly about his research idiosyncrasies but he keeps it in perspective.
“I get made fun of a lot in the garage, but I can take it,” he said. “It’s a real privilege to be able to add something to our broadcast that the average person at home without access to the garage wouldn’t know. To have that info at your fingertips at the right moment, though, requires weekly research and updating.”
The same friends who make fun of Dunlap’s notes also find it amusing to hide them.
“Our SPEED crew and other folks in the garage steal or hide my notes whenever they need a good laugh,” Dunlap said. “One of their favorite times to do it is during our production meeting at the track. Everyone gets a kick out of that. But sometimes there are accidents, usually because I set them down before I go on-camera. Just a couple of months ago, I laid my files on a tire stack and the tire specialist rolled it away. I had to track everything down.”
“Occasionally we’ll help him ‘misplace’ those mountains of stats and watch him worry for a while,” SPEED play-by-play announcer Rick Allen joked. “In our defense, we always give them back. But we’re not studying them, we’re just hiding them. One of the funny things about Ray is he is still just a step behind in the electronic world and carries all his paper files covering 18 seasons everywhere he goes. You can imagine how big that bag is and how much fun it is to hide from him.”
So, the obvious question is why Dunlap hasn’t adapted to the 21st century and integrated his notes into the nifty little invention known as a laptop. After all, it’s not nearly as fun for your friends to hide your computer as it is your painstakingly-hand scripted notes.
“I have a horrible memory,” Dunlap explained. “If I don’t write it down, I can’t recall it. Handwriting it all onto the cardboard each weekend helps me because it makes the data fresher in my mind.”
That’s an effort everyone on the SPEED team appreciates.
“It would be a challenge to find a stat or fact about the Truck Series that Ray doesn’t already know,” said Krista Voda, host of NCWTS Setup. “He knows more than most teams do. I think we all take Ray for granted a bit because if we’re searching for something obscure, we don’t even have to Google it. We just ask Ray. But then again, so does everyone else in the garage.”
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