Mike Skinner
No. 5 International Truck/Monaco RVs Toyota Tundra
Darlington Raceway – Too Tough To Tame 200
August 14, 2010
Darlington Raceway proved to be the track “too tough to tame” for Mike Skinner and the No. 5 International Truck/Monaco RVs Toyota Tundra team on Saturday night. A multi-truck pileup on lap 107 brought an early end to the event for the No. 5 Toyota Tundra team.
Skinner started the day at “The Lady in Black” with fast speeds in both practice sessions. The No. 5 International Truck/Monaco RVs Toyota Tundra finished seventh in first practice and 13th in final practice clocking in with an overall fast lap at 29.335 seconds. Qualifying order in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series is determined by a random draw, and unfortunately the No. 5 team pulled the first qualifying spot. The sun beat down on the track in the hours leading up to qualifying leaving Skinner with a very hot, slick track to make his lap. The driver of the No. 5 machine picked up two tenths from his practice lap to qualify in the 12th spot for the start of the 147-lap race.
Coming to the green flag of the Too Tough To Tame 200, Skinner made contact with the No. 18 Toyota Tundra when the field bottlenecked in front of him and he was left with nowhere to go. The contact caused the oil line to be knocked loose under the hood of the International Truck/Monaco RVs Toyota Tundra and sent smoke out the rear of the No. 5 machine. Luckily, two early caution flags allowed the crew to repair both the oil line and damage to the nose of the Skinner’s Tundra without losing a lap. Despite being scored in the 32nd position on lap 10, Skinner quickly worked his way back through the field to be scored 15th by lap 20.
Skinner worked his way inside the top-10 by the lap 97 caution. He was racing in the eighth position on lap 107 when another truck got loose in turn one setting off a multi-car pile-up at the historic oval. The International Truck/Monaco RVs machine sustained race-ending damage when the No. 7 came across the track right in front of the Skinner’s truck. The team immediately began working on repairs when Skinner arrived in the garage, but the damage proved to be too severe for him to return to the track in the closing laps. The No. 5 team was credited with a 22nd-place finish.
“The 7 truck came across and got us. He was already wrecked and we had nowhere to go when he came back across,” said Mike Skinner explaining the on-track incident that ended his night. “I hate it for our International Trucks/Monaco RV Toyota Tundra team; everybody works so hard on these trucks. We struggled a little bit early in the race, but we kept on working on it. It looked like we maybe would have finished in the top-five, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be for us tonight.”
In just a few days the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will take the green flag for a nighttime showdown at Bristol Motor Speedway. The O’Reilly 200 will commence at 7:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday, August 18th. The weeknight dose of NCWTS action will also be broadcast on MRN and Sirius XM radio at 7:45 p.m. EST.
