Local teams could shake up Camping World Truck Series Kroger 250

MARTINSVILLE — While rain wiped out Friday’s Sprint Cup Series qualifying, the Camping World Truck Series will attempt to qualify and race today for the Kroger 250 at Martinsville Speedway.

The race features drivers and teams from the area that could be players in deciding a winner today — weather permitting, of course.

HT Motorsports, headquartered in Lynchburg, features Terry Cook and 2006 Kroger 250 champion David Starr. Cook sits seventh in points and Starr is in 10th, 22 points behind Danville’s Timothy Peters.

“The home track is the home track for the team or the driver — …literally 10 minutes from the race track is our shop up at Joey Arrington’s empire in the northern part of Martinsville,” Cook said. “This is a big deal to race here.”

The same can be said for Peters, who sets up shop in Dry Fork. In five career races at the 0.526-mile paper clip-shaped oval, Peters has recorded three top 10 finishes and four top 20s.

“There’s no place like home — we’ve always had success up here at Martinsville Speedway in the Late Model stock car race and I’ve been fortunate enough to carry it over in the Truck Series,” Peters said. “Of course, you have a bunch of guys that have had a lot of success here. Terry and [with] David have run well here in the past and David winning, so we definitely will have our hands full and looking forward to Saturday.”

In last year’s race, Dennis Setzer took advantage of Kyle Busch and Johnny Benson getting together in the middle of Turns 3 and 4 to win his third Martinsville truck race, all in the spring. He and Mike Skinner are the only three-time winners in the truck series at Martinsville.

Peters finished 19th in last year’s running of the Kroger 250 after qualifying sixth.

Of the 20 Truck races held at Martinsville, only four times has the winner started outside the top 10, which usually means that track position is key, especially with the rule changes that NASCAR implemented on the truck series.

The new rules decrease the number of crew members going over the wall on a stop from seven to five and do not allow changing tires and fueling on the same pit stop.

“It’s been done before in the past where on these short races in the truck series — if your truck is handling good enough, you could come in and take fuel, make an adjustment and you could run the race on just one set of tires,” Starr said. “In the past, I have only come in and made adjustments and taken fuel
on so with the new rules, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. A lot of it depends on how your truck is handling.”

Tires could play a factor, since Goodyear brought a new tire to Martinsville for the truck series. In a way to get through the field, fresh tires pick up precious tenths of a second.

With that said, drivers like Peters could opt to make two consecutive pit stops under caution to get fuel and then tires if the truck is not handling well at all.

“Goodyear brought a softer compound right-side tire so I definitely think they’re going to make you work for it,” Peters said. “Pit road is going to be a lot busier now because we’ve had a couple of minutes for the guys to breathe. As soon as you leave, you’re going to have to come right back in, so it’s definitely going to make the crew chief earn his pay, I guess.