That's the combined NASCAR Craftsman Series appearances of top five finishers Rick Crawford, Dennis Setzer, Ron Hornaday Jr., David Starr and Mike Bliss.

Crawford and Sprague are tied for most series starts at 237.

Bliss has the least number of trips to the post: 164, one fewer than Hornaday.

How much did experience count in the series' 12th trip to the .686-mile paved oval?

A lot - if only by the age of the frontrunners.

Four of the five including winner Crawford, 47, are past the age of 40. Starr is the junior member of the group - 38 - in which the average age of which is 43.4.

David Ragan, the season's youngest Budweiser Pole winner at age 20, led 59 laps but effectively got left in the dust by his elders. Ragan, who kept Roush Racing's No. 6 Scotts Ford solidly in the owner's championship picture, finished ninth.

The Ragan-Mark Martin mount is just 90 points behind owner leader Robert Germain with 10 races remaining on the schedule.

***

Crawford points to the top-finishing group's experience as why an estimated 35,000 fans saw a bang-up finish - but without the bang.

"You had veterans who know each other," said Crawford of the five-truck shuffle that effectively settled the race in Turn 1 of lap 168. "I don't think any of us touched. We're not afraid to race each other hard."

Crawford, however, agreed that all were a few inches away from disaster.

"The odds were pretty good" of wrecking, he admitted. "I was glad when my spotter said 'clear.'"

***

Crawford has won races in four consecutive seasons after going four years without a victory following his Homestead-Miami triumph in early 1998. He ranks sixth among active drivers in back-to-back winning years. The group is topped by Setzer, who hopes to add to a record streak of eight seasons that began in 1998.

***

Speaking of Setzer, the off-weeks shakeup at Morgan-Dollar Motorsports appeared to work. Randy Goss took over the crew chief duties on the No. 85 FlexFuel E85 Chevrolet side of the shop with Eric Phillips now heading up Raybestos Rookie of the Year contender Kraig Kinser's bunch.

Defending race winner Setzer's runnerup finish was the team's first top five of the year. Kinser, meanwhile, recorded his best series finish of 13th.

Ironically, Setzer drove the mount that Phillips' group prepared.

"It is a whole team effort," said Setzer. "I'm proud of the whole bunch."       

***

Setzer led the point standings by 227 points after ORP in 2005 but then second place Ted Musgrave captured the championship.

Todd Bodine's cushion is 182 over Johnny Benson as the two finished seventh and 12th, respectively on Friday night.

Bodine rebounded from a terrible qualifying effort that put the three-time winner 29th on the 36-truck grid. That didn't seem much of a handicap as Bodine rallied into the top 10 at lap 56.

Significantly Bodine has failed to lead in his three most recent starts. He never went more than a race without collecting race-leading bonus points in the season's first 12 races.

Still, the championship remains his to lose.

Behind Bodine, absolutely nothing is settled. The difference between second and ninth places is 120 points. Eleventh-ranked Jack Sprague is 148 out of second after dropping four spots following a late-race accident and finish of 28th.

Sprague is poised to reach the $6 million mark in series winnings. He's won a career $5,982,645 entering this week's Nashville race in which a third-place or better finish will do the trick.

Johnny Benson, meanwhile, becomes the series' 33rd $1 million career winner when he takes the green flag at Nashville Superspeedway.

***

Crawford made it 12-for-12 in which the ORP winner has come from a top-five or better start. Crawford, the No. 3 starter, had a previous best qualifying run of sixth (2001), had never led a lap and had finished no better than sixth.

All five of the night's leaders paced their first laps at ORP.

***

Three Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidates finished among the top 15 for the fourth time in 2006. Bobby East (11th) and Kinser turned in their best series performances. Tenth-finishing Erik Darnell extended his rookie lead to 32 points over Chad McCumbee.

***

Terry Cook's late race charge from a dead-last among lead lap drivers following a lap 131 pit visit culminated in a sixth-place finish. Cook passed Bodine for the position during a four-lap shootout that followed the race's record-setting 11th caution.

The finish was the fifth top-10 in Cook's last six ORP starts.

"(Crew chief) Dennis Connor made a great call there at the end of the race to disconnect the rear sway bar and it brought this truck to life," said the race's 2002 winner. "We had a truck that was as fast as the race winner but we didn't have track position."

***

The series heads back to Tennessee next Saturday for its second of three stops in the Volunteer State. Toyota is the sponsor of Nashville Superspeedway's 2006 event in which the truck maker would like to (a) defend David Reutimann's victory of a year ago and (b) add to four consecutive wins in Tennessee.

Brandon Whitt kicked off the run at Memphis in July 2005. Mike Skinner followed Reutimann's Nashville win with a victory at Bristol Motor Speedway. Sprague won this year's Memphis Motorsports Park round last month.

Not a bad record: four races, four faces and four different teams.