The trucks start to roll at the start of the AAA Insurance 200 at Dover International Speedway. (Ronda Greer Photo)

The finish of Friday's AAA Insurance 200 quite neatly tied together the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series' present with the past as Ron Hornaday Jr. won its milestone 300th race.

Hornaday was among six drivers in the 36-truck field to have participated in the series' first race at Phoenix International Raceway on Feb. 5, 1995. In fact, the then-Dale Earnhardt Inc. employee captured the series first Bud Pole.

The Palmdale, Calif. driver also won the tour's 100th race in 1999 at Evergreen (Wash.) Speedway and the $100,000 Craftsman bonus that went with the victory.

Hornaday, however, wasn't the only veteran celebrating the heritage of a series that's a third of the way through its 13th season. Fellow inaugural race participants Johnny Benson (fourth), Mike Bliss (fifth) and Mike Skinner (seventh) also landed top 10 finishes. Skinner collected his 38th Bud Pole to extend the record in that category.

Friday's race showed that the veterans had lost little over the 11-1/2 years since the first truck rolled onto Phoenix's one-mile oval.

Hornaday is about to celebrate his 49th birthday. Benson is 43, Bliss 42 and Skinner hits the big "five-oh" on June 28th.

Morgan-Dollar Motorsports truck chief Chris Showalter became the only driver/owner/crew member/official to have participated in all 300 races. Showalter, 21 when he worked for Jim Herrick's Liberty Racing and driver Butch Miller, has been a member of six different teams and was IWX Motorsports' crew chief when Travis Kvapil won the 2003 NASCAR Craftsman Truck championship.

Bliss, who isn't having much luck with an under-equipped NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series team - he failed to qualify BAM Racing's entry for Sunday's race - is showing there's nothing wrong with his driving skills. In the seat of Bobby Hamilton's Racing's No. 4 Open Joist Dodge for the first time, Bliss recorded his third top-10 finish of 2007 driving for three different teams.

Bliss earlier produced Key Motorsports' first series top 10 at California Speedway then finished sixth at Lowe's Motor Speedway driving Dave Fuge's Xpress Motorsports entry.

Interestingly, Bliss recorded his top 10s in three different makes of truck: Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford.

BHR labored to land its first top five of the season which didn't come until the previous week at Mansfield Motorsports Park. Bliss's effort gave the team its first back-to-back finishes among the top 10 since Martinsville-Atlanta last fall.

All four manufacturers grabbed a top-five finish at The Monster Mile. That hadn't happened since July 8, 2006 at Kentucky Speedway - where Hornaday also won.

Chevrolet has won three consecutive races after snapping Toyota's four-victory streak and now trails the manufacturer point lead by just seven.

Engine failure sidelined Matt Crafton's Menards Chevrolet after 160 laps handing the Tulare, Calif. native a record he'd just as soon not own. The race was Crafton's 155th in the series without a victory breaking a deadlock with previous record-holder Lance Norick.

On the opposite end of a streak is David Starr, who has completed 56 consecutive races without a DNF. The last race Starr failed to finish was at California Speedway in February 2005.

The Houston driver is on track to break Bobby Hamilton's 65-race mark at New Hampshire International Speedway in September.

Skinner and Hornaday are the only drivers to have completed all 1,367 laps contested over the season's first eight races. Skinner has led all eight events for a total of 520 laps including 23 on Friday.

Stacy Compton has been around many a NASCAR block since his last series victory at Heartland Park Topeka in 1998. His runnerup finish at Dover was his most recent best - and top performance for a Wood Brothers/JTG entry since the team joined the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series last season.

Compton, running a partial season in a Zaxby's-sponsored truck shared with Joey Clanton, held off Kvapil's furious charge over the race's closing 25 laps.

"It's taken awhile and the trucks have gotten a lot more competitive (since 1999)," said Compton, who also does commentary for ESPN's NASCAR Busch Series coverage. "I'd like to run fulltime here. Hopefully, this will turn some heads and help me find something else while I'm trying to fill in."

Kvapil had his best run since Daytona where he also finished third. His crew chief, Mike Beam, had expressed frustration with the trucks Roush Fenway Racing has given the 2003 champion during the subsequent races.

Kvapil and the No. 6 K&N Filters Ford team appeared back on form at Dover. "We just played the strategy and had a good truck," said Kvapil. "It was fun."

Johnny Benson had crew chief Trip Bruce back from a two-race suspension and responded with a solid run of fourth. On the wrong pit stop cycle, Benson came from a lap down and possible had the strongest truck at the finish. He was the highest finishing Toyota entry.

The run was Benson's 50th in the top 10 moving him from ninth to seventh in the points. "We were quick enough to win but we just didn't catch the break we needed," said Benson.

Hornaday keeps nibbling away at Skinner's championship and now trails by 77 points. Dover's finish - Todd Bodine and Ted Musgrave were out of the top 10, Jack Sprague was a victim of the first-lap accident in Turn 2 and Rick Crawford suffered an untimely flat tire and accident - has allowed the duo to separate themselves from the pack.

Bodine is almost 196 points off the lead in third place and hoping to break a year-long winless streak of 24 races as he heads to Texas Motor Speedway as the defending winner of Friday's Sam's Town 400.

With Kyle Busch suffering a late tire failure - the team elected to take fuel only during his mid-race pit stop under green - the obviously fastest truck again failed to grab the checkered flag. Busch led 78 laps before finishing 12th - a ranking hardly indicative of the 2005 Dover winner's domination.

"I knew with 30 laps to go that (we) had killed the right side tires and we saw when I came in that the right front had split," said Busch, passed by Hornaday for the final time on lap 137. "I still can't believe we ran that long (segments of 86 and 67 laps) on a green flag here in the truck series. I just hate it for this Billy Ballew Motorsports team; we should have had the win."

Aaron Fike again was the highest finishing Raybestos Rookie of the Year in 10th-place but ran a solid top-five until a green flag pit stop cycled back his RFMS/Red Horse Racing Toyota.

Fike now heads runnerup Willie Allen, who finished 14th, by 26 points.

Eric Norris will take over Gene Christensen's No. 08 The GPS Store.com Chevrolet for this week's Sam's Town 400 as regular driver Chad McCumbee subs for TNT commentator/driver Kyle Petty at Pocono Raceway.

Norris is stunt coordinator for FOX's drama "Prison Break" which begins filming its new season in two weeks. Christensen, meanwhile, will make a major political announcement at the event.