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Rick Minter's OBSERVATIONS
Pat Tryson, who has been leading Mark Martin's No. 6 team, will move to the No. 16 of Greg Biffle, replacing Doug Richert. Veteran crew chief Jimmy Fennig, who has been in charge of Roush's Busch and Craftsman Truck Series efforts, will move to the No. 6 car, which will be driven next year by rookie David Ragan. Bob Osborne, who has been Jamie McMurray's crew chief for most of this season, will return to the No. 99 of Carl Edwards, replacing Wally Brown, who apparently is leaving Roush. Robbie Reiser will remain as Matt Kenseth's crew chief. Still to be determined is where Richert, now Biffle's crew chief, will end up and who will lead the No. 26 of McMurray. Roush said the changes are necessary to keep up with owners like Richard Childress and Ray Evernham, who were more bold with their personnel changes after last year. "You looked at [Evernham and Childress] in particular and say they went through a revolution over the winter and didn't do a tweak to try to catch where we were and where Hendrick [Motorsports] was and where [Joe Gibbs Racing] were," Roush said. "They attempted to leapfrog it, and they did a very, very good job." Busch record When Kevin Harvick fell short of passing Matt Kenseth at the end of Saturday's Busch Series race at Phoenix International Raceway, it meant that Sam Ard's record of 10 wins is safe for another year. Harvick enters the last race of the season with nine victories, so the best he can do is tie Ard this weekend at Homestead- Miami Speedway. "Who ever thought we would get a chance at one of Sam Ard's records?" Harvick said. "In this day and age, it is kind of unheard of." The problem for Harvick, had he broken Ard's record, would have been dealing with his wife, DeLana, a longtime fan of Ard, who set the record in 1983. Ard and DeLana's father, John Paul Linville, raced against each other in the early years of the Busch Series. Little Debbie off days What you don't see at the track each Friday and Saturday shows what the McKee family, makers of Little Debbie snack cakes, believes in. One of the first tasks performed Sunday morning at Phoenix International Raceway by Ken Schrader's crew was to switch sponsor logos on the Wood Brothers' No. 21 Ford. For Friday's practice and qualifying and Saturday's practice, the car was decked out in the logos of the team's other sponsors, Motorcraft and the U.S. Air Force. But on Sunday, the car carried the colors of the weekend's primary sponsor, Little Debbie. The switch occurred Sunday, as it has lots of other Sundays, because the McKee family that makes Little Debbie snack cakes are Seventh-Day Adventists, and their religion forbids doing business on Friday evenings and on Saturdays. The use of a wrap, which is essentially a giant decal that can cover all or part of a car, allows the Woods to accommodate the religious beliefs of their sponsor. "It takes about five minutes to remove the wrap," team coowner Len Wood said, adding that the McKee company also halts its production lines on Friday evenings and on Saturdays. And, he said, the McKees don't charge the team's other sponsors for the exposure they get on the weekends that Little Debbie is the primary sponsor. "That's their belief,"Wood said. Truck title
Todd Bodine is nearly a shoo-in to win his first Craftsman Truck Series championship. Any finish inside the top 25 in Friday's Craftsman Truck Series finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway will assure Bodine of his first major NASCAR championship. Johnny Benson, second in the standings, won the Casino Arizona 150 at Phoenix, but the 185 points he earned weren't enough to make much of a dent in Bodine's lead. That's because Bodine finished fourth and earned 160 points.
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