PHOTO: VPS MotorImages for TruckSeries.com
SEASON IN REVIEW
Kannapolis, North Carolina driver Wayne Edwards scored his first LASTCAR Truck Series Championship in 2007, scoring three last-place finishes in seven starts during a twenty-five race season. Edwards won the series’ first tiebreaker since 2000 by beating Travis Kittleson in Bottom Fives 5-3.
Edwards was competing in his eighth Truck Series season, having never run more races in a season than the thirteen he ran as a rookie driving for Lonnie Troxell in 2000. Edwards scored his best career finish on February 18, 2005, finishing 9th driving the #24 Mighty Motorsports Chevrolet for owner Rob Ferguson in the season-opening Florida Dodge Dealers 250. After failing to qualify Ferguson’s trucks into the field for the season’s first two races in 2006, Edwards joined Green Light Racing, owned by Gene Christensen, and parked his trucks in three races.
In 2007, Edwards drove for Green Light Racing as well as for Scott Upshaw and Andy Hillenburg. He finished a season-best 28th at Nashville on August 11 in Hillenburg’s #71 Chevrolet, but scored all three of his season’s last-place finishes in Green Light’s trucks.
Edwards’ first finish of the year came at Memphis on June 30 when his #0 Green Light Racing Chevrolet lot the brakes after two laps, followed a lap later by teammate Bobby Dotter in the #06 GPSStore.com Chevrolet. Edwards ran the #06 in his other two last-place finishes starting in the next race at Kentucky on July 14, where the brakes failed after 3 laps of the Built Ford Tough 225. His third finish, also in the #06, came seven races later at Talladega on October 6, where he fell out of the Mountain Dew 250 after 3 laps with a vibration.
In all, Green Light Racing’s two trucks picked up six last-place finishes in 2007, adding in a pair of last-place runs in the #06 for Blake Mallory at Texas on June 8 and for Randy MacDonald at Milwaukee on June 22. The following year, Green Light Racing would run even more races, setting a new team record for last-place finishes in the process.
Edwards remained with Green Light in 2008, and though he fell short of his second-straight LASTCAR Truck Series title that year, the three last-place runs he scored allowed him to tie 1999 LASTCAR Truck Series Champion Phil Bonifield for the all-time Truck Series last-place record. Edwards took the record from Bonifield in 2009, and he has continued to run a handful of Truck Series races in every season since 2000.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Travis Kittleson, who tied Edwards’ three last-place finishes in 2007, finished last in three of his five starts that season, which were the last of his eight career Truck Series starts. Though he made three starts for Green Light in the #07 Chevrolet, all three of Kittleson’s last-place finishes came with three other teams. Driving for David Dollar, he finished last at Kansas on April 28 when his #46 Bob Steele Chevrolet crashed 18 laps into the O’Reilly Auto Parts 250. He raced for David Fuge at Nashville on August 11, where his #19 Xpress Motorsports Ford had ignition problems after the opening lap of the Toyota Tundra 200. Then, in his last career start at Texas on November 2, Kittleson broke the suspension on Bobby Dotter’s #08 People Against Drugs Chevrolet after 5 laps of the Silverado 350K.
Third-year racer Timothy Peters ran just two races for David Dollar in 2007. He finished 9th at Martinsville on March 31, his fourth top-ten finish in thirty-four starts. In his other start at Bristol, he finished last for the first time when his #46 Tahoe Smokeless Chevrolet crashed after 33 laps of the O’Reilly 200, the first-ever NASCAR race run on the track’s controversial new gradient-banked concrete surface. Peters joined Red Horse Racing in the years to come and scored his first series victory with the team at Martinsville in 2009.
Regan Smith also raced for David Dollar in 2007, running the #47 Ginn Resorts Chevrolet to complement both a partial Busch Series season and his first seven Cup Series starts for Bobby Ginn. It was Smith’s fourth season in the Truck Series, and despite a partial schedule, he scored his first top-five finish at Gateway, where he came home 5th in the September 1 running of the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers Ram Tough 200. He also finished last for the first time at Martinsville on October 20 when is #47 crashed after 65 laps of the Kroger 200. The next year, Smith went full-time in the Cup Series, winning Rookie of the Year and crossing the line first at Talladega in the fall, only to have the win stripped away after a controversial last-lap pass on Tony Stewart. His first Cup win came three years later at Darlington.
Following his 1997 Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championship, a 1995 CART Championship, and a win in the 1995 Indianapolis 500, Jacques Villeneuve left the BMW Sauber F1 Team to try his hand at NASCAR in 2007, making seven Truck Series starts in advance of another two in the Cup Series. Three races after his career-best 14th-place finish at Atlanta on October 27, the Canadian finished last in his final Truck Series race at Homestead on November 16 when his #27 UNICEF Toyota started 3rd, but crashed 80 laps into the Ford 200. Villeneuve has since competed on the road courses in the Nationwide Series, scoring four top-five finishes in his first nine starts since 2008.
Another Canadian driver, 48-year-old Pierre Bourque of Ottawa, Ontario, scored his first Truck Series last-place finish in his series debut at Indianapolis Raceway Park on July 27. Bourque’s #71 driving.ca Chevrolet fell out with crash damage after 29 laps of the Power Stroke Diesel 200.
The 2007 season was overshadowed by the loss of 2004 NASCAR Truck Series Champion Bobby Hamilton, who lost his fight with cancer on January 7. Hamilton, a regular in NASCAR since the late 1980s, won ten Truck Series races in 102 career starts over eleven seasons, and ran as an owner-driver for all but his first two career starts in 1996. Though Hamilton scored the 2000 LASTCAR Cup Series Championship with Morgan-McClure Motorsports, he never once finished last in the Truck Series.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Wayne Edwards [5 B5s], Travis Kittleson [3 B5s] (3)
2nd) Chad Chaffin (2)
3rd) Pierre Bourque, Ken Butler, Johnny Chapman, Bobby Dotter, Brendan Gaughan, Justin Hobgood, Kevin Lepage, Bill Lester, Randy MacDonald, Blake Mallory, Timothy Peters, Morgan Shepherd, Jack Smith, Regan Smith, David Starr, Jacques Villeneuve, Mike Wallace (1)
