The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series visits the legendary Martinsville Speedway this weekend and that leads me to reminisce about “the good ole days”. The series began in 1995 and during that first season, the trucks competed primarily on short tracks. Venues like Saugus, Evergreen, I-70 and Mesa Marin are just a few of the fantastic short tracks that the trucks visited. They also visited Martinsville that first season as well, with Joe Ruttman taking the win that day. Fifteen of the twenty races scheduled that first season were short tracks, two races on road courses and just three on superspeedways. That is a great mix. There is just something amazing about seeing 36 trucks beating and banging around the great short tracks we have around the country. Obviously, the trucks at Daytona and Talladega are great, but it just doesn’t compare to a race at Portland or Tuscon.
In the beginning, the truck series brought us back to the rough and tumble Saturday night racing we grew up with at legendary tracks like Hickory or Bowman Gray, yet had that appeal of the “big time”. The drivers had character flaws and attitudes, they weren’t polished and toned down. When a driver got interviewed after a wreck, their remarks were always unpredictable and exciting.
While working in the pits on late models the weekends, we loved when a NASCAR touring series came to town. It was the big time, the series we wanted to be in someday. We admired these guys, despite the fact that they weren’t perfect, in fact, that may have strengthened our admiration. They were real people. This is the same feeling we had with the trucks series in it’s early years.
In recent years, the series schedule has moved away from the small bullrings with imperfect surfaces and more toward following the Cup and Nationwide series on very nice raceways with new surfaces and no bumps. Those tracks are great and definitely have their place on NASCAR, but the trucks should be back on the bullrings where they started.
Recently, rumors have been swirling that NASCAR is going to move the schedule back to the shorter stand alone tracks. The Kroger 200 at Martinsville this Saturday will be a look back to the past. Hopefully, the powers that be will be paying attention and see how great the racing action is and it will help push the trucks back to their roots.
