The high hopes that veteran driver Chad Chaffin and his Key Motorsports race team had for Friday night's 2008 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season opener at the Daytona International Speedway came crashing down as the #40 Chevrolet Silverado was among the eight race trucks sucked up in a major backstretch melee after just 18 laps of the Chevy Silverado 250.

Eyeing a strong race performance after recording the best-ever qualifying run for a Key Motorsports' entry in any race at Daytona, Chaffin had stormed from his 22nd place starting berth to within one spot of the top 10 just six laps into the 100-lap affair.

The #40 did slide back a bit to the 15th position when Chaffin complained of a loose handling condition a few laps later, and when the first caution flag flew on lap 10 when Scott Lynch's machine spun and hit the second turn wall, crew chief Gary Showalter elected to pit for fuel, four fresh tires and a wedge adjustment.

With some teams staying on the race track and electing not to pit while others just got fuel or changed two tires, the Showalter decision pushed Chaffin's truck back to the 26th spot when the race re-started on lap 14. With fresh rubber and the chassis fix, Chaffin started to again rumble through the field and the #40 was showing in the 21st position on the 19th lap when all hell broke loose.

The Toyota driven by NASCAR Sprint Cup star Kyle Busch was in the middle of a three abreast battle at the front of the field when it got out of shape and began to spin. Busch's truck struck the on-coming Toyota of Mike Skinner sending the Skinner machine and two others spinning and then hard into the outside retaining wall.

Blinded by the tire smoke of the spinning and crashing trucks and the fire that ignited under the hood of the battered Ford driven by P.J. Jones, Chaffin was unable to avoid the wrecked machinery in front of him and rammed into the Ford of Brendan Gaughan. The hit pushed in the entire front end of the Key Motorsports Chevy, breaking the radiator and moving the engine to end the night in disappointment. Even Chaffin's spotter, Tommy Morgan, was unable to give the Key Motorsports driver a route to take when the incident occurred because of the smoke.

"When will we ever catch a break at this place," is all team owner Curtis W. Key, Sr. had to say as he again saw his entry crash out early for the fourth time in as many Daytona starts dating back to the 2005 season, two of them coming last year when Mike Bliss and Larry Foyt both were involved in accidents not of their choosing after running near the front of the field.

"It's tough to stop quickly when you're running 190 miles an hour here (Daytona), and when you can't see where you are going, things happen to you like it did to us tonight. It's really disheartening," said Chaffin who entered the race with the third highest overall driver rating for drivers competing in Daytona International Speedway NCTS races since 2005 when NASCAR implemented its new loop scoring program.

"We definitely had a top ten truck tonight, but you have to be there at the end to do that and we unfortunately weren't. We made that pit stop to make an adjustment and changed tires as well because we had an extra set that we did not use during practice. We were coming back to the front when that accident started and I just had no way to avoid the trucks that had already wrecked," Chaffin added.

It was the third time in his last nine races with Key Motorsports that Chaffin has crashed out early and finished 36th and last in the field, and it certainly is not what everyone was expecting to kick off the new season.

"We practiced really well and the truck was stable and consistent, and we had a really good engine under the hood. We were looking for a finish close to or better than the one we had with this same truck at Talladega last October (the #40 finished eighth then)," said Showalter. "But you have to have some luck to accomplish that and luck wasn't on our side tonight," he ended.

The lap 19 incident that collected the #40 and the trucks of Skinner, Jones and Gaughan and began with Busch's part spin also involved the trucks of Ted Musgrave, Jon Wood, Matt Crafton and Scott Lagasse, Jr. with only Chaffin, Jones and Gaughan unable to return to battle.

"We have to work really hard now to erase this memory and play some catch up in the race next weekend in California," Chaffin stated. "I have always run well in Fontana, and if we are to remain a factor in this year's point's race we have to re-group and come away with a good finish there," the 39-year-old Tennessee pilot added.

Next week's race will be run at noon, California time on Saturday as a prelude to the running of the NASCAR Nationwide Series race on California Speedway's 2-mile, D-shaped oval at 4:30. The NCTS race will be televised live by the FOX-TV network while ESPN2 will televise the Nationwide event. Both races will be broadcast nationally over syndicated radio by the Motor Racing Network.