Catchfence

If Mike Skinner is going to repeat as winner of Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (9:30 p.m. ET live on SPEED™; NCWTS Setup with Krista Voda at 9 p.m. ET), odds are he will have to beat Ron Hornaday Jr. to do so.

But that’s been the story since the Truck Series’ inaugural race in 1995, when Hornaday sat on the pole but Skinner stole his thunder with the race win and season championship (Hornaday finished third in points). Not to be outdone even in the early days, Hornaday zeroed the scored the next year by capturing the title ahead of Skinner’s third-place points effort.

Thus goes the seesaw, on-track rivalry between the two 50-plus-year-old former champions. While the pair became fast buddies, their on-track competition was and remains the stuff of legends and a cornerstone of the series. As recently as the 2007 season, the pair waged one of the closest championship points battles in series history -a four-point differential with only three races remaining, and true to form, Hornaday currently leads the NCWTS points while Skinner holds third.

Skinner, behind the wheel of the No. 3 GM Goodwrench Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing in 1995, and Hornaday, in the No. 16 NAPA Brake Parts Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Inc., were each other’s biggest rival from the word “go.”

“They viewed each other as their biggest competition,” said Doug Richert, Hornaday’s first crew chief in the NCWTS, who also briefly served in the same capacity for Skinner in 2008 and won with both drivers. “They were always battling each other. If Hornaday had the will and the way, he was going to win. If we didn’t, it was always Skinner right there beating on his door trying to take it away from him.”

“Rivals is one way to look at it but they both raced for all they were worth because both had been very successful, and when you pit two extremely successful drivers against each other, they always feel they can win,” said Joe Ruttman, 1995 NCWTS championship runner-up. “Losing is a bitter pill to swallow. They were both extremely competitive and neither wanted to lose. They both felt they should win.”

“Skinner, (Jack) Sprague and Hornaday all had their battles and were always trying to outdo each other,” said Rich Burgess, Skinner’s crew chief in 1995-’96. “Hornaday would get Skinner on the restart, get under his skin and upset him. I think the trigger was the fact they were and still are the same type of driver.”

The California natives helped define and put the Truck Series on the map when there was no precedent or mold for it.

“In the early days in the Truck Series, no one was supreme,” said H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, legendary promoter and former President and General Manager of Lowe’s Motor Speedway. “It was a new series and people were pretty excited about it. Those two guys (Skinner and Hornaday) were pretty competitive and still are. They took the experience they had, which was a lot, coupled it with good equipment and went back and forth. The incredible thing is it’s still going on.”

“They’ve both been a real key to the success of Truck racing,” Ruttman said. “NASCAR is fortunate to have two great champions in the series duking it out after all these years. That’s a real honor for the guys to participate in the Truck Series that long.”

With the dysfunctional family comprised of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series owner Childress and his driver, Earnhardt, fielding dueling trucks for two of the most competitive drivers on the circuit, how much of a role did bragging rights for their bosses play in Hornaday and Skinner’s antics?

“I think part of the rivalry between Mike and Ron came from Dale owning the team that Ron drove for and I owned the team Mike drove for,” Childress said. “One driver wanted to make sure his boss got to ‘ride’ the other boss, so I think that just added to the overall rivalry. Both guys were veteran drivers from California who knew a lot about each other and, as a result, had a lot of respect for each other.”

“We at RCR had the tie with Earnhardt owning Hornaday’s truck, and because so many people related Earnhardt to the No. 3, a lot of people thought he owned our No. 3 truck,” said Will Lind, RCR Truck Series team manager at the time. “When we raced on a West Coast swing and worked in motel parking lots, people would come up to us thinking it was an Earnhardt truck.”

But despite who brought home the trophy to their truck owner, Hornaday and Skinner always had the utmost respect for each other in and out of the truck.

“They knew each other’s abilities on the track,” Childress said. “They never purposely took each other out. They just had a great racing rivalry.”

But boys will be boys with hardware and bragging rights up for grabs – no matter their age.

“I don’t see any difference in their rivalry today,” Richert stated. “Ron is definitely on his game right now and I think Mike wants to beat him even more to prove his competitive rivalry as in the old days. They obviously want to beat each other.”

… The perfect recipe for yet another intense competition …

“A good rivalry, the best events in sports, comes down over and over again to two guys duking it out and that’s exactly what the Trucks got with Skinner and Hornaday,” said Ken Squier, legendary broadcaster.

SPEED, now in more than 79 million homes in North America, is the exclusive home of the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, Gatorade Duel at Daytona, NASCAR Sprint Pit Crew Challenge and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. The only network delivering live, at-track programming all season long, SPEED offers the definitive pre- and post-race NASCAR Sprint Cup Series programs – NASCAR RaceDay and NASCAR Victory Lane, as well as other popular NASCAR programs including Trackside Live, NASCAR Performance, NASCAR Live!, This Week in NASCAR, NCWTS Setup and NASCAR in a Hurry.

- SPEED Press Release