Things just have not worked out as planned.

Combining some bad luck in the season opener in Daytona with handling woes in race number two in California and the #40 is showing out of the top 30 in the crucial owner's points standing and needs to make a complete turnaround in the next two events or face an uphill battle. That battle begins this Friday night at the Atlanta Motor Speedway with the running of the American Commercial Lines 200 that is set to get the green flag at 9 p.m.

"We have struggled, but it isn't like we haven't been prepared," said Chaffin, who like team owner Curtis Key and his teammates entered the new campaign with very high hopes for a good, solid start.

"We had a great race truck in Daytona, one very capable of running near the front, but that big wreck in front of us early in the race just filled the track with smoke and I could not see. Not even my spotter (the team's Director of Competition Tommy Morgan) could see, and when I made the decision to go high, I just guessed wrong and hit another truck.

"At California, I can't really say what happened, but we had some issues with our front end that we didn't really notice in practice and it just made it impossible to drive the truck hard through the corners," added Chaffin who had to settle for a 36th and last finish in Daytona and then a 28th place effort in California two weeks ago. It has left the #40 in the 32nd position in owner points.

"We certainly are not where we had planned to be two races into the season, but we still have two races to right the ship to put us back on course," Key stated. "We did discover some things with our California truck that should help us in Atlanta, and we're going down there to run hard and run well. We just need some luck to be our side this trip," he added.

It has been an all-around team effort since the California race to find out just what was wrong with the race truck and to fix it and Chaffin, crew chief Gary Showalter, Morgan and Key have all been networking and getting help from a variety of sources to try and improve. Most of the Chevrolets in the Series have experienced similar handling woes as the #40 did in California, so the effort to solve problems does not just lay with Key Motorsports. But being currently out of the top 30 is a major concern for a team that showed tremendous promise in just its second full season of NCTS competition last season.

"We're a far better race team and have far better equipment than what we have showed so far. That is the most frustrating part of it all," said Chaffin. "I know that I can still drive, so having the last two weeks for everyone to sort out the problems and try to solve them has helped. But we won't know just how much of the problems have been solved until we get on the race track on Friday," he added.

Thus, heading into this next 2-race stretch, the attitude has changed in the Key Motorsports camp. From the high hopes that prevailed going into the first two races where past performances by Chaffin and the team at those race tracks had historically been strong to now racing at a track where the #40 has not performed very well, the Key Motorsports contingent will be far more business-like when the trucks take to the fast, 1.54-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway quad-oval for their first practice Friday morning.

"We found some things that we think will help us, but we're not the only ones having problems with their trucks," said Showalter, who indicated that the new, smaller fuel cell and its position at the rear of the race truck that NASCAR implemented this season has changed the flow of air and made handling difficult for the red bow tie brigade - especially at the rear wheels. "We're all just skating around, and that was some of the problems Chad experienced at California," Showalter added.

"We have to perform this race or face even greater consequences heading into the Martinsville race at the end of the month," said Chaffin who has competed three times in the truck series at Atlanta during his lengthy NASCAR career. With Bobby Hamilton Racing in 2004 and 2005, Chaffin posted top ten finishes in both AMS events he ran topped by a seventh in 2005.

With Key Motorsports, Chaffin failed to qualify for the first Atlanta race in the #40 at the start of the 2006 season, Key Motorsports' first full season of competition in the series, and in his last outing last fall was collected in an early-race accident and finished 36th. Maybe not having a good record in the #40 in Atlanta will turn out to be a blessing this time around for Chaffin and his race team.

"We're counting on it," exclaimed the Murfreesboro, TN pilot.