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After 22 of 25 races, the race for the 2005 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship is still as unclear as the day the season started in the cold of February.  The only thing that seems for certain is the field has been whittled down to two: current point leader Ted Musgrave and Dennis Setzer.  Musgrave, who won earlier this season at Gateway, took over the top spot after Setzer, a four-time winner in 2005, was caught in a slump through the months of September and October.

The fact that there is a championship battle worthy of discussion with just two races to go may be a minor miracle after taking into consideration Setzer's point lead just eight races ago.   After winning back-to-back races at Michigan and Milwaukee, Setzer settled into a points lead which he stretched to 227 points, a series record for the middle of the season.  But Setzer's championship hopes took a serious hit at Richmond, when a flat tire caused him to ride around the track on the rim, grinding the right front suspension off his No. 46 Chevrolet Silverado Chevrolet.  Setzer got back on track the next week in Loudon when he drove home to a second-place finish behind winner Rick Crawford, but the four ensuing races have seen nothing but frustration for the two-time series runner-up.

A 14th-place finish at Las Vegas was followed by a 19th at Martinsville.  Once one of Setzer's strongest tracks, the tricky paperclip-shaped oval has been a thorn in his side this year with a 26.0 average finish.  Setzer's strong performance on superspeedways this season - he has wins on the 2-mile Michigan International Speedway and the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway - gave Setzer's Morgan-Dollar

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Motorsports team reason to be optimistic entering the final stretch of the season, but a 13th at Atlanta and an 18th at Texas has put them in a four-race stretch without a top ten finish, the longest stretch without a top-10 for the team this season.

While Setzer's team has hit a slump as the stretch run heats up, Musgrave and his Ultra Motorsports teammates have hit their stride.  Musgrave started off the season with six top-ten finishes in the first seven races of 2005, including a dominant win at Gateway International Raceway which saw the No. 1 Mopar Dodge lead 158 of the 160 laps.  Following a third-place run at Charlotte, Musgrave hit his roughest stretch of the season.  He ran 17th at Dover, three laps off Kyle Busch's winning pace and then finished 14th at Texas Motor Speedway.  Musgrave's season bottomed out at Michigan International Speedway when engine failure put him out of the race, knocking him out of contention for a win and relegating him to a 28th-place finish, his worst of the season.  A second DNF four races later at Memphis - and a resultant 26th-place finish - started Setzer on a run that would lead up to his record point lead the following week at Indianapolis.

Musgrave turned the corner at Nashville Superspeedway with a second-place finish, which kicked off a run of five top-five finishes in six races.  A fourth-place at Richmond - combined with Setzer's 33rd-place run - opened the door for Musgrave to make a run at the points lead. 

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Musgrave held serve at Loudon, finishing third just one spot behind Setzer, and capitalized with a runner-up finish at Las Vegas to move within five points of Setzer.  Setzer struggled to find the handle at Martinsville.  An early spin put him back in the pack, but cautions and pit strategy allowed him to make up ground on Musgrave.  In what may be the defining moment of the championship battle, Musgrave used the front bumper to move Setzer out of the way to take position, and he eventually drove away from Setzer to finish fourth.  Musgrave left Martinsville with a 51-point lead, and he knocked Setzer out of the lead for the first time in 10 races.

The last two races have seen both championship contenders struggle.  Musgrave was strong at Atlanta, but two flat tires and one bout with the wall left him 14th at the finish, one position behind Setzer.  Setzer looked ahead to Texas, a track that has seen him go to victory lane twice in the past, as a chance to regain lost ground, but he finished four positions behind Musgrave in 18th and lost 12 more points with just two races remaining.

The tail of the tape shows Setzer with an average finish of 12.6 in eight races at Phoenix, including a

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third-place finish in 2003, and an average finish of 8.5 in the two previous races on the new Homestead layout.  Musgrave has an average finish of 6.3 in six starts at Phoenix, and has an average finish of 7.5 in the previous two races on the new Homestead track, including a runner-up finish last season.

Setzer needs to pick up 64 points in two races - 32 points per race - to lay claim to the championship.  With Musgrave having a better average finish at both tracks remaining on the 2005 schedule, Setzer may be fighting an uphill battle, but a second thing remains clear as we close out the fight for the series title: neither Ted Musgrave nor Dennis Setzer will give up the fight until the checkered flag falls at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 18.