Hornaday Wins Copart 200
June 21, 2009 by Warren Hayashi
Filed under Racing
Ron Hornaday will probably be wishing for rain every time he’s scheduled to race at Milwaukee on a Friday night, as re-scheduling the Copart 200 Camping World Truck Series race to Saturday resulted in the Kevin Harvick Inc. racer dominating from start to finish on his 51st birthday. His truck ran beautifully around the track and appeared to be running a lot better than his competitors, who were having their problems. His crew chief Rick Ren decided to make a few changes after Friday’s practice session that definitely helped improve the truck’s performance and helped lift Hornaday above his competition on Saturday.
Ron Hornaday wins the Copart 200
Truly a cool day for this young-at-heart competitor, who when asked about his age commented, “I’m in my 50s, now, I guess.”
The victory was the 41st career Camping World Truck win for Hornaday and his second win of the 2009 Camping World Truck Series and at Milwaukee, where he won in 1997. Ron was in front of the pack for 180 of the scheduled 200 laps around Milwaukee and he was one second ahead of second place finisher Dennis Setzer at the end.
The race started with Hornaday grabbing the lead from Matt Crafton on the third lap and then increasing his lead with every lap, until Aric Almirola’s disastrous spin on lap 127. Hornaday used the caution provided by Aric’s spin to pit and prepare his No. 33 Chevrolet to run the final laps. Hornaday was fast enough to stay on the lead lap after his pit and then when the seven racers in the lead pitted, Hornaday was back in the lead.
Hornaday continued to lead until a late caution flag brought the field back together for a restart with only 8 laps remaining in the race. He jumped ahead after the green flag fell and stayed ahead of Dennis Seltzer for the final 8 of laps. This win puts Hornaday 36 points ahead of Crafton for the series lead, with half the season left to go.
Brian Scott finished third in the Copart 200, Todd Bodine took fourth, and James Buescher was able to finish fifth. Stacy Compton finished sixth, Tayler Malsam took seventh place, Colin Braun was able to take eighth, David Starr was in ninth, and the top ten was rounded out by Terry Cook in his Toyota.
“Image: Zuma Press”
