Chase Austin expects to return for Kansas Truck race later this month

By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Trail Motorsports' Chase Austin was a special guest of the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium with fellow NASCAR Camping World Truck Series competitor David Starr.

Chris Vleisides
Kansas City Royals

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Chase Austin’s racing career has been full of hills and valleys, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that he can deal with the hills and valleys of working with a new race team in 2009.

Trail Motorsport had hoped to field a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series entry for Austin for the 2009 season (as well as a Nationwide Series car for a to-be-named driver), but after two races in enlisting MRD Motorsports to field a truck for the team and Austin, the organization has missed the last two events while regrouping and getting its own trucks prepared. It also has yet to run a Nationwide event with its own equipment and crew.

“It has not been too fun having to sit out those races,” Austin said. “Things just got a little bit disorganized. The economy really hit bad and not a lot of it is Trail’s fault. A lot of people are having trouble with the economy and that was the big holdup.

“I think we’re going to miss a few more races this year; I’m not exactly sure which ones. We’re going to have to go over the schedule again, pick and choose which are going to be best for the limited schedule we’re going to do.”

The 19-year-old driver is used to things not going exactly as planned. He signed a contract with Hendrick Motorsports at age 14 in 2004 but then that organization dropped its driver development program. He signed with Rusty Wallace Racing near the end of the 2007 season, ran one Nationwide race but then parted ways with the team in 2008 without ever competing in another event.

“Things have been worse before,” Austin said Tuesday speaking by phone on his way to a NASCAR promotional appearance at Kansas City Royals baseball game. “At least I know I still have people trying to do something for me. That’s better than not having anything at all. I’m supporting them in the times they’re going through. They told us they were going to have a couple of problems starting up with because they didn’t know exactly what to expect. We’re sticking it out.”

Austin said the Trail team believes it can get a truck ready for him to race at Kansas Speedway, the site of the Truck series' next scheduled event. Clint Cram, whose experience includes working at Dale Earnhardt Inc., will be his crew chief.

While Austin should be excited to race at a track that is about 45 minutes from his hometown of Eudora, Kan., he knows he has a steep hill to climb to perform well at the race.

“I’m excited to run it,” Austin said. “I’m kind of nervous at the same time considering the situation. But I’m just trying to stay optimistic. I’m more of a person that sees the glass as half full. It seems like there has been a big hole in the bottom glass for a long time, but I’ve been trying to keep it half full.”

Maybe Austin sees the glass half full because he finished 13th in his Truck debut at Daytona – only his second race on a superspeedway – and then 23rd at Auto Club Speedway in California.

“With the experience I had and the results that we got, I was real happy,” Austin said. “[I learned] enough to where I had [to] sit down when I got back and I had to write it all down so I wouldn’t forget the next time I went back – just odd and end things that you just pick up [such as] if you make a long run, what happens in a short run, things that we tried that helped [the truck].”

Austin admits that he doesn’t know how much momentum he will bring from the start of the season since his earlier trucks were prepared by MRD Motorsports. Trail just finalized plans to go to Kansas a couple of days ago and will have to spend several long days at the shop to get a truck ready, Austin said.

“There’s going to be very few common factors in anything I’ve done so far,” Austin said. “The only thing that is going to be really common is I’m going to be in a truck and I’m going to be the same person driving it.

“It’s going to be a truck that none of us have ever ran. … We’re going to go to a short track to test, so I’m not sure it’s actually going to help us. It’s more for me being in a seat again because I haven’t done that in a while and getting the whole team to go to the track [together].”