CHAFFIN AVOIDS WRECK BUT LOSES SPLITTER ON FRONT OF TRUCK;
STRUGGLES TO 24TH PLACE FINISH IN TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY RACE

FORT WORTH, TEXAS (November 3, 2007) – Driving a race truck in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series without a front splitter is like trying to steer a boat without a rudder. Chad Chaffin found that out Friday night when he struggled to a 24th place finish in the Silverado 350K race at the Texas Motor Speedway with the splitter to his #40 Westerman Companies Chevrolet gone.

Chaffin luckily slipped through the race trucks of drivers Brian Scott and Joey  Clanton that had just come together and spun down the front stretch during the second lap of Friday night’s race. In order to avoid the two spinning machines, Chaffin unfortunately had to drive through the infield grass tearing off the splitter to his race truck – the device that race trucks and NASCAR’s new Car of Tomorrow in the Nextel Cup Series use to help keep the nose of the race vehicle stuck to the race track and to stabilize it.

Forced to run the remaining 148 laps without the device killed the down force on Chaffin’s #40 truck and did not allow him to run full throttle through the corners – something that is needed to be able to compete. The end result was the loss of five laps and a very disappointing 24th place finish.

“I had a top ten or twelve race truck tonight, no doubt about it,” said Chaffin, who knew from the drop of the green flag that he had a race truck that was definitely capable of contending as long as he could work his way through traffic and towards the front from his 26th starting position earned in Thursday night’s qualifying.

“The truck was driving great, and even though it was just a couple of laps into the race, I knew that I had a competitive machine – one that could get up there and race with the best trucks. It’s frustrating because we were able to avoid that wreck and all of the other ones out there tonight, but when you can only go half throttle through the corners at a track as fast as Texas, there’s nothing more than you can do but just run the laps, let the faster trucks by and bring the truck back in one piece,” Chaffin explained.

Chaffin took advantage of the numerous spin outs and multi-truck accidents that took place throughout the remainder of the wild event to pick up positions and at least earn a top 25 finish. Nine race trucks failed to finish the race due to severe damage sustained during accidents or blown motors, and on three different occasions the leader of the race at the time was bounced from the action by either motor problems or wrecks.

Chaffin, who was caught up in a wreck not of his choosing last week in Atlanta to snap a streak of two straight top ten finishes for Key Motorsports, was running the 100th race in his NCTS career and was eyeing a good run to help commemorate the occasion. Though his qualifying run wasn’t anything to write home about, Chaffin and crew chief Gary Showalter both felt that the #40 Chevy would run well in the race.

“We spent most of our practice time working on getting the truck to run in traffic and without the looseness that I experienced last week in Atlanta. I was confident that once the sun went down that our truck would come to life, and it did. Then came that wreck. I can’t believe the lack of luck we have been in the last two weeks,” said Chaffin. Showalter had mixed emotions.

“We did what we needed to do to get the truck driving good with other trucks around it, and Chad did a great job weaving through that wreck. We didn’t think that he had any damage at all except for clogging up the air ducts with grass when he drove through the infield,” Showalter said.

“When the water temperature started to rise, we thought it was because of grass blocking up the grill, and when he brought him in for a pit stop during that caution to clean off the grill we then noticed that the splitter was gone. All we could do at that point without losing a bunch of laps was made the truck drivable for him and get the best finish we could. Chad really did a great job considering the situation and never complained. We’ll just go to Phoenix next week and hope that this bad luck string will end,” Showalter added.

One of the reasons for the frustration expressed by both Chaffin and Showalter is that some of the trucks that Chad was driving away from when that early-race accident occurred ended up with top finishes. This included the fourth place finishing Dodge driven by Mike Bliss, the tenth place finishing Chevrolet of Tim Sauter, the 14th place finishing Ford of Erik Darnell and the Dodge of Dennis Setzer in the 15th finishing position.