BARRY DODSON IS LEARNING AS MUCH FROM RYAN MOORE
AS MOORE IS FROM DODSON AND KEY MOTORSPORTS TRUCK EFFORT

Barry Dodson has more than 35 years of NASCAR business experience. Rookie driver Ryan Moore has a little more than three. Yet the Key Motorsports’ crew chief says he has learned almost as much from the Scarborough, Maine charger as Moore might have learned from Dodson. It has made for a unique and fairly successful combination after just 11 weeks.

“Ryan just amazes me at times, and his performances have been stellar…. despite what the records might show to this point,” Dodson explained. “He’s a kid who doesn’t have any bad habits, and he’s doing a lot of learning right now about the radial tires, how to drive these race trucks with a lot of drag and down force to them, and understand that he has to go really hard, really quick to make them run well.

“He’s also had to deal with a bunch of new race tracks that he has never even seen before let alone race on. And he’s had to learn about us, as basically a new organization, and I think it has gone fairly well,” Dodson added.

On the plus side, Moore has been able to race the #40 Key Motorsports Chevrolet Silverado in all but one of the last six NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series events beginning with Mansfield, OH. That was a far cry from what the Key Motorsports entry was able to accomplish over the first six races this year when the #40 failed to qualify for four of those races.

He also has recorded the best finish for a Key Motorsports truck entry ever with a 14th at Texas and then followed that up with the best-ever qualifying run in the history of Key Motorsports (including Busch Series action from 1991 to 1999) with a 10th place effort last weekend in Kansas.

On the negative side are some poor finishes due to some basic bad luck and mistakes. Ryan wrecked his truck last week at Kansas when another truck washed up the racetrack and hit him, and a potentially good run at Michigan was ruined when Moore was forced to drive through the infield grass trying to avoid an accident and tore up the front valance destroying the truck’s aerodynamics.

At Mansfield, Moore went from 36th and last, when the race was started on owner points after qualifying was rained out, to seventh in just 80 laps only to bow out with electrical problems. That was due to a battery that was dislodged in its compartment causing the truck to lose power when going through the turns. Dodson felt that all these situations were avoidable.

“The Mansfield problem just should not have happened at all, period!” Dodson explained. “We should have been a lot closer to the front at Michigan, but we kind of make a mistake within the team that made us falter a bit up there. At Kansas we just freed up the truck too much, and the adjustments we had planned to make to rectify the problems Ryan was having were thwarted by the accident. He would never have been where he was at the time of that accident had we given him the set-up that would have allowed him to be running closer to the front instead of in the back,” Dodson added.

Dodson also alluded to the fact that he probably spent too much time on getting last week’s race truck ready for qualifying instead of for the race since all of the trucks entered in Kansas were guaranteed to start (only 36 trucks were in the garage area).

Dodson is quick to assume some of the responsibility for Moore’s disappointments because he knows what he has in Moore, yet he is pleased with the overall results so far…personally and team-wise.

“We’re getting better as a team, and Ryan is one of the primary reasons for that. But we’re moving in the right direction, points-wise, and one of our goals is to get into the top 30 so we will be guaranteed to start. We missed a lot of races earlier in the year (when Lance Hooper was the crew chief and Chad Chaffin was the driver) that put us way behind, but we have narrowed the gap considerably and are a race or two away from hopefully achieving our goal.

Dodson was also quick to point to the team’s new engine program as another plus that has helped the team move up the competitive ladder. “The horsepower that we now have with our own Key Motorsports engine program has helped us a bunch, and I am excited going to every race to run knowing what I have. And Ryan Moore is certainly the biggest plus we have.

“He has the talent and know-how to one day become a household name in this industry, and we’re thankful with the opportunity to have him and to be able to build our entire program around him,” Dodson added.

As for Moore, who will turn 23 next month, he also is happy with the new-found relationship he has forged with Dodson who he is leaning on to get him through these first-time visits to many of the tracks at which the Truck Series is running.

“Barry has been behind the scenes developing some of the sport’s best drivers at many of these same race tracks, and they have logged thousands of laps over the years. I can’t help but learn from all of that experience,” Moore stated. “If we can just eliminate some of the mistakes we have made as a team, I know that we have what we need to run up front on a regular basis and be able to race with the better teams,” Moore added.

The duo will have the opportunity to make that happen again this coming weekend at Kentucky Speedway, and Dodson confessed that the challenge facing his young driver and race team this time around might be a little stiffer than the last few weeks.

“We’re taking a different type truck to Kentucky this week, but we are forced to pretty much do that (what with the trucks Moore has run the last four weekends needing some timely repair). But at the same time, I’m kind of anxious to do that, also, to see if maybe there’s something better there than what we have had the last few weeks,” Dodson commented.

As for frustration setting in that could derail the effort, Dodson said that any driver would tend to get frustrated when they don’t get results, and qualifying is part of it. “We were on top of the world, so to speak, with Ryan’s qualifying run in Kansas last week but we all left there totally dejected including Ryan. But if you are going to be good in this sport, you need to care about what you are doing and display your emotions because that is the only way to get better.

“We’re just like a football or basketball team. We have to pick up and go on to the next race knowing and learning from what we did so we can get better and not make the same mistakes. I think we can do that, and so does Ryan Moore,” Dodson concluded.