Roush Fenway Racing always has practiced what it preached, mainly that there's strength in numbers. And while the team has the largest fleet in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the same is no longer true in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, where Colin Braun is the team's lone driver this year.
In years past, Roush Fenway has run multi-vehicle Truck teams, but a dearth of sponsorships and a cutback in funding from Ford Motor Co. for the Truck Series means the squad's only full-time entry this year is Braun's No. 6 Con-Way Freight F-150.
Braun already has gotten off to a respectable start to the 2009 season, capturing his first Truck Series pole last month at Daytona International Speedway, where he finished ninth in the season-opening race. He followed that up with a disappointing 20th-place effort at Auto Club Speedway after suffering transmission problems. Thus, with two of 25 races in the books for the 2009 NCWTS season, Braun is ranked a decent 12th in points.
But Braun is looking forward to Saturday's American Commercial Lines 200 at the fast 1.54-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway. And he'll be bringing a potent bullet with him in the form of Roush Fenway chassis RK-58, which was victorious in its last outing when Erik Darnell edged Johnny Benson by mere inches to capture the victory at Michigan International Speedway last summer.
"We didn't have the greatest finishes at Atlanta last year, but it's still one of my favorite tracks," said the 20-year-old Braun, who is a native of Ovalo, Texas. "It's so fast, which makes it really fun to drive. Two green-flag pit stops killed us in the spring race when we had a really fast truck. In the fall the limited practice (due to rain) really hurt us and we were just too free all day."
But the forecast this weekend is for near-perfect weather Friday through Sunday, with only light cloud cover and temperatures in the mid-70 degree area.
"This time around the weather is supposed to be good so we should be able to get all of our practice in, and we've got a great truck," said Braun. "Erik Darnell won at Michigan with this truck last June so I feel confident we will be very competitive Saturday afternoon."
Crew chief Mike Beam concurs.
"We had a disappointing run at California last week after trouble with the transmission hurt us throughout the race," said Beam. "I expect Colin to have a strong run at Atlanta this weekend since we're taking a really good downforce truck that we got from the No. 99 fleet. Atlanta requires a lot of downforce and a lot of horsepower to run well. I think we'll be
able to give Colin both of those to get the job done."
